The markets opened lower with the Dow losing 18 points to 12,060 even as October retail sales rose. Nasdaq slipped 3 points to 2654.

On the upside

Chimera Investment (NYSE: CIM) that its economic book value as of September 30 was a better than expected $3.01.

MicroStockProfit.com issued a research report on Pacific Ethanol (Nasdaq: PEIX).

Netlist (Nasdaq: NLST) announced agreements to make its patented HyperCloud memory products compatible with Hewlett Packard (NYSE: HPQ) and IBM (NYSE: IBM) servers.

On the downside

Geron (Nasdaq: GERN) blamed high costs for discontinuing its stem cell research programs.

Penn Virginia Resource Partners (NYSE: PVR) priced its offering of 7 million common units at $24.55 per unit.

Sterne Agee downgraded American Airlines parent AMR (NYSE: AMR) to a Neutral rating.

In the broad market, declining issues outpaced advancers by a margin of more than 2 to 1 on the NYSE and by nearly 5 to 3 on Nasdaq. The Russell 2000 which tracks small cap stocks lost 3 points to 729.