Down day for most regional stocks

The worst-performing regional companies, based on percentages, were O’Reilly Automotive, Great Plains Energy,Kansas City Southern and YRC Worldwide. The winners included Garmin, up 1.4 percent; DST, up .8 percent; Waddell & Reed, up .8 percent, and Sprint, up .4 percent.

Stocks flip between gains and losses; Cisco climbs

Cisco Systems led the Dow Jones industrial average slightly higher Thursday after the technology company reported higher sales. Mixed corporate earnings and economic reports kept the major stock indexes flipping between slight gains and losses.

E-book sales lift publishing business

E-book sales, especially romance in the year of “Fifty Shades” erotic novels, gave the book business a lift in 2012, according to a survey of publishers released Wednesday. E-book sales in fiction rose 42 percent from the year before to $1.8 billion; nonfiction sales rose 22 percent to $484.2 million.

Senate Democrats call for freezing student loan interest rates for two years

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other top Democrats unveiled legislation that would head off an increase set to hit in July and would instead extend the current 3.4 percent rate into 2015. They rejected President Barack Obama’s call for more sweeping changes in the loan program, including replacing its fixed rates with ones that would vary with market conditions