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8B Daily News – Thursday, January 5, 2012 Furniture DEPOT 235 S Main St., Red Bluff 530 527-1657 www.thefurnituredepot.net HOURS: MONDAY-FRIDAY 9:00-6:00 SATURDAY 9:00-5:00 • SUNDAY 11:00-5:00 Save up to50%off retail Wednesday, and investors held on to their gains from a strong opening to the year. It wasn't much, but after the lurching, up-and-down weeks of 2011, investors were grateful for the win- ning streak. Strong December sales helped the stocks of On Wall St., it's not much, but it's two in a row Wall Street Stocks barely budged automakers and specialty stores. Banks, health care companies, and utilities fell slightly. Netflix surged after its first good news in months. But nothing else moved much. The Dow Jones industrial average edged up 21.04 points, or 0.2 percent, to close at 12,418.42. The Dow opened the year with a 180-point gain Tuesday, which brought it to the high- est level since July. ''At least thus far in 2012 we haven't followed the path of 2011, where if it's a good day, there's a bad day right away,'' said Ryan Det- rick, senior technical ana- lyst with Schaeffer's Invest- ment Research. The Standard & Poor's A reminder to Daily News readers … The D NEWSAILY RED BLUFF TEHAMACOUNTY Will no longer publish Print or e-editions on Mondays beginning Monday, January 9, 2012 Effective next week, print editions will be published 5 days per week, Tuesday through Saturday. On Mondays, fresh stories from over the weekend will be published exclusively on the newspaper's website at www.redbluffdailynews.com These, plus columnists and key feature pages previously published weekly in the Monday print edition, will now appear in print on Tuesday. New! Effective this week, Daily News home delivery print edition subscribers will receive FREE full 24/7 access to www.redbluffdailynews.com ! • Simple online registration required. • Print subscribers who previously registered and paid for Daily News website subscription will have their website subscription expense refunded by Digital Plus (details to follow.) •Website access does not include subscription to The Daily News' digital online e-edition. D NEWSAILY www.redbluffdailynews.com RED BLUFF TEHAMACOUNTY 500 index and Nasdaq also had big gains Tuesday but only moved a fraction of a point a day later. The S&P inched up 0.24 to close at 1,277.30. The Nasdaq fell 0.36 to 2,648.36. ''It's healthy to see that after a big rally,'' said Randy Warren, chief invest- ment officer for Warren Financial Service. ''People need to sit back and think about it.'' Retailing industry stocks rose 0.8 percent as a group after post-Christmas sales came in 5.3 percent better than a year ago. Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. rose 1.8 per- cent, and Ross Stores Inc., which sells discounted clothes, rose 0.7 percent. Big-box stores fell, though. Analysts have been concerned that some stores raised holiday sales with deep discounts that will hurt profits. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. fell 1.1 percent, making it the second-biggest declin- er among the Dow's 30 stocks. Target Corp. fell 2.2 percent and Kohl's Corp. fell 1.4 percent. Automakers delivered a strong end to 2011, helped carmaker stocks. Analysts had been expecting Decem- ber to be a strong sales month for cars on the theory that more confidence in the economy would unlock pent-up demand. Ford Motor Co. rose 1.5 percent and General Motors Co. rose 0.5 percent after those two companies and Chrysler reported strong increases in December and full-year sales. Visa Inc. fell 1.8 percent and MasterCard Inc. fell 3.3 percent. Janney analysts downgraded both to ''neu- tral'' from ''buy'' and pre- dicted that Americans will keep cutting their personal debt. The biggest winner in the S&P 500 was Netflix Inc., up 11.4 percent. The company, which delivers movies and TV shows online and by mail, said customers had streamed more than 2 billion hours of video in the fourth quarter. The yield on 10-year Treasury notes briefly popped above 2 percent, then fell to to 1.98 percent in the afternoon. Yields have been falling over the past year as investors have loaded up on low-risk investments. A rise in yields suggests that investors are more willing to take risks by parking money elsewhere in exchange for higher rewards. The price of gold rose $12.20 to $1,612.70 per ounce. Oil rose 26 cents to $103.20. European markets declined, and the euro fell back below $1.30, to $1.2945, within a penny of its lowest level in a year. Another increase in Italy's borrowing costs renewed worries about Europe's efforts to restore confidence in its debt-hobbled govern- ments.