October 25, 2012-Stocks Fail to Mount a Rebound Finding Strong Resistance

After once again failing to sustain an initial upward move, stocks turned in a lackluster performance over the course of the trading day on Thursday. Nonetheless, the markets eventually ended the day showing a slightly positive bias. The major averages managed to close modestly higher but well off their best levels of the day. The Dow edged up 26.34 points or 0.2 percent to 13,103.68, the Nasdaq inched up 4.42 points or 0.2 percent to 2,986.12 and the S&P 500 climbed 4.22 points or 0.3 percent to 1,412.97. The initial strength on Wall Street was partly due to a positive reaction to a batch of largely upbeat economic data, including a report showing that the U.K. emerged from recession in the third quarter. The report from the U.K. Office for National Statistics said the U.K. economy grew by 1 percent in the third quarter after contracting in each of the three previous quarters. The U.S. Labor Department also released a report showing a bigger than expected drop by initial jobless claims in the week ended October 20th. The report showed that initial jobless claims dropped to 369,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 392,000. Economists had been expecting jobless claims to fall to 372,000 from the 388,000 originally reported for the previous week.