End-of-Day Market Summary for January 12, 2012

This is your Benzinga news summary for Thursday, January 12, 2012, covering headlines from Thursday's daytime trading session. Today at market close, the Dow Jones Index traded up about 21.57 points 0.17%, the S&P 500 traded 0.23% higher, the Nasdaq Composite Index traded up 0.51%, and the U.S. dollar trades slightly lower near the $81.05 level. Earlier today, JP Morgan upgraded EMC EMC to Overweight and Lazard upgraded ManTech MANT to Buy. View all of today's upgrades here. DA Davidson downgraded Dycom DY to Neutral and Key Banc downgraded UDR UDR to Hold. View all of today's downgrades here. Overseas, European markets ended their trading session mixed. Britain's FTSE 100 lost 0.15%, Germany's DAX increased by 0.44% and France's CAC 40 slid by 0.15% on the session. Asian stocks ended their session lower. China's Shanghai Index tumbled by 0.41%, Japan's Nikkei 225 decreased by 0.74%, and the Hang Seng index lost 0.3%. On the economic calendar, Retail Sales came in at 0.1% versus an estimate of 0.3%; Initial Jobless Claims came in at 399K versus an estimate of 375K; Continuing Claims came in at 3628K versus an estimate of 3595K. On the commodity front, gold and silver futures traded higher today, with gold trading about 0.1% higher today. Energy futures are lower, with crude oil down over 1.8% near the $98.95 level and gasoline futures are trading lower by about 1.3%. Natural Gas futures are lower by about 2% and copper futures are trading over 0.2% lower. Today's afternoon earnings announcements included JDA Software Reports Prelim Q4 Revs $173M vs $180M Est, 2011 Revs $670M vs $678M Est. In corporate news, Home Federal Bancorp HFBL announced that Thomas Trawick will join the Board of Directors and that it will hand out a quarterly cash dividend of $0.06 per share. Cardica CRDC announced that the drug in its MicroCutter program is not progressing as well as hoped. PS Business Parks PSB announced that it has redeemed all outstanding Series M preferred shares. This concludes your news summary for January 12, 2012.