Stocks Retained Mild Gains after Getting Shaken by Europe

U.S. stocks ended higher on Monday, extending the market’s best weekly performance in several years, as Wall Street continued to move on headlines related to Europe. After climbing as high as 167 points, the Dow Jones Industrial Average finished at 12,097.83, up 78.41 points, or 0.7%. The S&P 500 Index climbed 12.8 points, or 1%, to 1,257.08. The Nasdaq Composite added 28.83 points, or 1.1%, to 2,655.76.

The International Monetary Fund on Monday agreed to release a 2.2 billion euro ($2.95 billion) aid disbursement to Greece, part of a three-year IMF-EU bailout package to help the debt-stricken country avoid bankruptcy.

Federal regulators approved tougher constraints on Wall Street risk-taking on Monday, adopting the “MF Global rule,” named after the collapsed brokerage firm that is believed to have improperly used hundreds of millions of dollars of customer money.

A key measurement of the U.S. services industry showed slowing growth in November, the first disappointment after a string of positive data, according to an index released Monday. The Institute for Supply Management said its non-manufacturing index slowed from 52.9% in October to a reading of 52.0% in November, its lowest level since Jan. 2010.

New orders for U.S.-made factory goods declined by 0.4% in October after falling a downwardly revised 0.1% in September, the Commerce Department estimated Monday.

Crude futures posted only a modest gain Monday, retreating from a high above $102 a barrel. Crude futures for January delivery closed at $100.99 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, up 3 cents.