NEW YORK — U.S. stocks closed lower after a late slide Thursday but still managed to finish with their best first quarter in more than a decade.
The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 30.88 points, or 0.3 percent, at 12,319.73. Stocks traded in a tight range as investors hesitated ahead of key data, but slipped minutes before the market’s close after Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis president Narayana Kocherlakota said key U.S. interest rates might have to rise in late 2011.
Still, the Dow finished the year’s first three months up 6.4 percent, its biggest point gain since 1998 and its biggest percentage gain since 1999. The measure has closed up seven of the past eight quarters.
Growing optimism that the U.S. economic recovery is strengthening has fueled this quarter’s gains despite turmoil overseas.
Worries over the destruction in Japan and the conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa briefly sent the Dow down 6.3 percent this quarter, and the benchmark indexes were trading nearly flat for the year just two weeks ago. Since then, the indexes have rebounded vigorously.
The S&P 500 has climbed 5.4 percent so far this year, its best first quarter since 1998. The measure edged down 2.43 points, or 0.2 percent, to 1,325.83 on Thursday. The Nasdaq composite added 4.28 points, or 0.2 percent, to 2,781.07 on Thursday, and is up 4.8 percent for the first quarter.
“It was a struggle — it wasn’t easy,” Erick Maronak, senior portfolio manager at Victory Capital Management, said of the gains so far this year. “The positive outcome for the quarter came in a pretty brief period of time.”
Construction- and mining-equipment maker Caterpillar was the Dow’s top performer for the quarter, climbing 19 percent. On Thursday, Caterpillar edged down 18 cents to $111.35.
Energy companies also fueled the blue-chip measure’s gains as oil prices rose amid turmoil in Libya and fears that unrest in North Africa and the Middle East could spread to key oil exporters, including Saudi Arabia.
