U.S. stocks ended lower on Thursday, with the three major indexes falling more than 1 percent, while shares of Twitter surged in their debut on the New York Stock Exchange. In world economic news, the European Central Bank cut a key interest rate to 0.25 percent, while European stock markets made modest gains in afternoon trading, keeping them near five-year highs. In U.S. economic news, the economy grew faster than expected in the third quarter, the Commerce Department reported. The department said third-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) expanded at a 2.8 percent annual rate, accelerating from the 2.5 percent pace in the second quarter and beat economist expectations for a 2 percent pace. Meanwhile, the number of people seeking initial U.S. unemployment benefits fell 9,000 to 336,000 last week, marking the fourth consecutive week of declines, the Labor Department reported. Twitter began trading at 73 percent above its initial public offering price of $26 in early morning trading. Twitter continued to rise from $45.10, climbing as high as $50.09, and closing the day up 73 percent at $44.90. Twitter was sharply higher than rival social media sites Facebook and LinkedIn, which were both down. The dollar gained versus the euro, but lost ground to the pound, and the yen. Light sweet crude oil for December delivery rose to $94.26 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gold futures fell to $1,306.40 an ounce. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 152.9, or 0.97 percent, to 15,593.98. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 23.34, or 1.32 percent, to 1,747.15. The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index fell 74.62, or 1.90 percent, to 3,857.33.
