U.S. Markets Exit Best Oct. In 3 Years

Stocks finished slightly lower, Thursday, ending a session where the major market gauges drifted between small gains and losses to the downside. But when the trading was done, the Dow Jones Index boasted a 2.8% gain for the month of October, the Nasdaq picked up 3.9% while the S&P 500 added a whopping 4.5% on the month.

Positive economic news, including an impressive gain in a regional manufacturing index, did little to influence market direction as traders appeared content to sell into any small rally. S&P 500 industry sectors were split between winners and losers, with the best gains for consumer discretionary, while financial stocks proved the largest drag on equities.

Data Dump
Economic data out Thursday morning included the Labor Department reporting a smaller-than-expected 10,000 decline in new unemployment insurance claims last week, slipping to 340,000 during the seven days ended Oct. 26.

Manufacturing as measured by the Chicago Purchasing Managers Index also unexpectedly rose, surging to more than a three-year high of 65.9 in October. That represented a nearly 20% rise over September's reading and easily dispatched consensus estimates looking for a 55.0 reading this month.

Commodities
Crude oil for December delivery settled 39 cents lower at $96.36 per barrel while December natural gas was down 4 cents to $3.58 per 1 million BTU. December gold fell $25.40 to $1,323.50 per ounce while December silver slipped $1.12 to $21.86 per ounce. December copper was off 3 cents at $3.30 per pound.

Here's Where The Markets Stood At Day's End

• Dow Jones Industrial Average down 73, or 0.5%, at 15,545
• S&P 500 down 6, or 0.4%, at 1,756
• Nasdaq Composite Index down 11, 0r 0.3%, at 3,919

• Hang Seng Index down 0.42%
• Shanghai China Composite Index down 0.87%
• FTSE 100 Index down 0.71%

• (+) WUBA, Chinese online retailer ends first day as a public company roughly 50% higher than where it began. Earlier prices IPO of 11 million ADS at $17.00 each, generating $187 million in gross proceeds.
• (+) ZLTQ, Posts $0.08 per share net loss, easily beating the $0.19 per share loss analysts expected. Doubles FY13 revenue guidance to 40% year over year increase, which would be $106.7 mln, topping estimates by $14.2 mln.
• (+) SHOR, Fiscal Q1 earnings of $0.07 per share, ex items, beat the Capital IQ consensus by $0.07 per share. Revenue also tops expectations.

• (-) ARIA, Temporarily shelves its Iclusig leukemia treatment because of possible cardiac-related side effects linked to the drug.
• (-) AVP, Cosmetics seller reports Q3 adjusted EPS of $0.14 per share, missing forecasts by $0.05. Total revenue fall 7% to $2.3 billion, also shy of forecasts for $2.4 billion.
• (-) NIHD, Lowers FY13 earnings guidance, now saying it expects profit this year will trail its prior forecast by more than 30%.