U.S. stocks ended mixed Thursday, as investors await the final word from Washington on the extension of former President George W. Bush-era tax cuts. U.S. House of Representative Democrats voted Thursday against considering the tax package for those making more than $250,000 per year, which would also extend unemployment benefits and create a payroll tax holiday. In U.S. economic news, the number of people filing for initial jobless claims fell 17,000 to 421,000 in the latest week, form 436,000 the previous week, the Labor Department said in its weekly jobless claims report. Economists expected the number to decrease to 429,000. The commerce Department said wholesale inventories rose 1.9 percent in October, following a 0.6 percent increase in September. The October gain was much larger than the 0.7 percent gain economists had expected. In company news, Share of AIG jumped 13 percent after the insurance giant finalized the terms of the latest restructuring to repay the estimated $20 billion it received during the financial crisis. The U.S. dollar gained against the euro and fell against the yen. Light sweet crude oil for January delivery rose 9 cents to $88.37 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gold futures rose $9.60 to $1,392.80 an ounce. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 2.42, or 0.0 percent, to 11,370.06. Bank of America and J.P. Morgan were among the best performers on the Dow, while chemical company DuPont was the weakest component. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 4.72, or 0.4 percent, to 1,233.00. The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index rose 7.51, or 0.3 percent, to 2,616.67.
