End-of-Day Market Summary for December 19, 2011

This is your Benzinga news summary for Monday, December 19, 2011, covering headlines from Monday's daytime trading session. Today at market close, the Dow Jones Index traded down about 99.90 points or 0.84%, the S&P 500 traded 1.18% lower, the Nasdaq Composite Index traded down 1.26%, and the U.S. dollar trades lower near the $80.90 level. Earlier today, Raymond James upgraded Mercer International

to Outperform and Credit Suisse upgraded Lazard

to Outperform. View all of

. Stifel Nicolaus downgraded Echo Global

to Hold and Auriga downgraded Heico

to Hold. View all of

. Overseas, European markets ended their trading session mixed. Britain's FTSE 100 lost 0.41%, Germany's DAX decreased by 0.54% and France's CAC 40 rallied by 0.06% on the session. Asian stocks ended their session lower. China's Shanghai Index tumbled by 0.3%, Japan's Nikkei 225 decreased by 1.26%, and the Hang Seng index lost 1.18%. On the economic calendar, the NAHB Housing Market Index came in at 21 versus an estimate of 20. On the commodity front,

and

futures traded lower today, with gold trading about 0.12% lower today. Energy futures are mixed, however, with

up over 0.3% near the $94 level and

futures are trading higher by about 0.3%.

futures are lower by about 0.3% and

futures are trading over 0.5% lower. Today's earnings announcements including Red Hat Reports Q3 EPS $0.28 vs $0.26 Est; Revenues $290.00M vs $289.62M Est; . In corporate news, Tangoe

announced that

. Commercial Metals Company

announced that

. Amgen

and Watson Pharma

announced that

. This technology will capitalize on each company's strengths. Today's Movers include:

This concludes your news summary for December 19, 2011.