End-of-Day Market Summary for December 8, 2011

This is your Benzinga news summary for Thursday, December 8, 2011, covering headlines from Thursday's daytime trading session. Today at market close, the Dow Jones Index traded down about 198.44 points or 1.63%, the S&P 500 traded 2.11% lower, the Nasdaq Composite Index traded down 1.99%, and the U.S. dollar trades slightly higher near the $78.90 level. Earlier today, JMP Securities upgraded Alterra Capital

to Outperform and Piper Jaffray upgraded Pacific Sunwear

to Neutral. View all of

. UBS downgraded NRG Energy

to Neutral and Morgan Stanley downgraded Cree

to Equal-Weight. View all of

. Overseas, European markets ended their trading session lower. Britain's FTSE 100 lost 1.14%, Germany's DAX decreased by 2.01% and France's CAC 40 slid by 2.53% on the session. Asian stocks ended their session lower too. China's Shanghai Index slid by 0.13%, Japan's Nikkei 225 decreased by 0.66%, and the Hang Seng index lost 0.69%. On the economic calendar, Initial Jobless Claims came in at 381K versus an estimate of 395K; Continuing Claims came in at 3583K versus an estimate of 3700K; Wholesale Inventories came in at 1.6% versus an estimate of 0.3%. On the commodity front,

and

futures traded mixed today, with gold trading about 0.04% lower today. Energy futures are mixed, however, with

down over 2.5% near the $97.90 level and

futures are trading lower by about 1%.

futures are higher by about 0.5% and

futures are trading over 0.07% lower. On the earnings front today, Smith & Wesson Boosts Forecast; Guides Q3 Revenue $92-96M vs $101.24M Est; Coopers Reports Q4 EPS $1.46 vs $1.21 Est; Revenues $360.90M vs $356.93M Est; Comtech Telecommunications Reports Q1 EPS $0.41 vs $0.30 Est; Revenues $113.40M vs $93.50M Est. In corporate news, Center Bancprp

announced that

, worth $10 million. Analogic Corp

announced that

. Stone Energy Corp

announced that

. Today's Movers include:

This concludes your news summary for December 8, 2011.