NEW YORK — Stocks finished another volatile session mixed Thursday after a spike in wholesale prices touched off inflation concerns and partially overshadowed a strong increase in retail sales last month.
Despite the uneven economic news, an upbeat forecast from Honeywell International Inc. propped up the Dow Jones industrial average.
Wall Street, which this week has paid close attention to steps by the Federal Reserve to stoke greater movement in moribund credit markets, again looked to economic data for signals about the health of the economy.
In one unwelcome development, prices at the wholesale level jumped 3.2 percent in November — their biggest increase in 34 years — after a steep rise in wholesale gasoline prices. But the news wasn’t all bad. The Commerce Department said retail sales rose in November by the largest amount in six months, and a Labor Department report showed a drop in new claims filed by those seeking jobless benefits.
The modest movement came as investors further examined the Fed’s agreement with the European Central Bank and the central banks of England, Canada and Switzerland to combat what it described as elevated pressures in the credit markets.
Scott Fullman, director of investment strategy for I.A. Englander & Co. in New York, said investors struggled with the day’s economic readings as well as the Fed’s actions.
“It’s definitely a mixed picture. People are still digesting what came from the Fed. You put this all together, and it gives you a healthy dose of volatility,” he said. “I really don’t think anybody is saying, ‘I’m very confident to get into this market.’ ”
The Dow rose 44.06, or 0.33 percent, to 13,517.96, after being down nearly 120 points at one point in the session.
Broader stock indicators showed smaller moves and finished mixed. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index edged up 1.82, or 0.12 percent, to 1,488.41, while the Nasdaq composite index declined 2.65, or 0.10 percent, to 2,668.49.
Declining issues outnumbered advancers by about 2-to-1 on the New York Stock Exchange, where consolidated volume came to 3.49 billion shares, compared with 4.35 billion shares traded Wednesday.
The market’s back-and-forth trading has likely kept some uneasy investors out of the market, said Robert Schaeffer, vice president of Becker Capital Management Inc. in Portland, Ore. He pointed to relatively light trading volumes of late as evidence of hesitation by some investors.
“You don’t like to stick your neck out because the S&P may be down 30 points in the next five minutes,” he said. “It makes people hesitant to invest.”
The mixed economic readings came in a week already made busy by the Fed’s decision Tuesday to lower interest rates for the third time this year and its announcement a day later of the liquidity plan.
A slowdown in the housing market remains a concern for Wall Street, as do spiking mortgage defaults that have made banks hesitant to lend to one another amid uncertainty about who might be holding bad debt. The Fed’s actions are aimed at easing the logjam.
