Thursday Evening Business Brief

There's no new record for the Dow Jones industrial average. An early rally fizzled on Wall Street today, pulling the Dow slightly lower and a bit further away from reaching a record. The Dow ended down nearly 21 points, or 0.2 percent, to 14,054. That's 110 points below its record close in October 2007. The S&P 500 slipped 1 point today and the Nasdaq lost 2 points

• Investors are selling off commodities as the stock market continues to show strength. As a result, the price of oil fell today. Benchmark crude for April delivery fell 71 cents to finish at $92.05 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gold, which investors often buy in uncertain economic times, fell more than $20 an ounce with encouraging economic news and a rising stocks. Silver and platinum dropped as well. The metals sell-off in commodities markets helped pull down oil.
• Hostess is choosing Mexico's Grupo Bimbo as the buyer for its Beefsteak bread brand. Hostess says a $31.9 million bid by the maker of Entenmann's cakes beat out another offer by Flowers Foods. But Hostess, now is in bankruptcy protection, says it picked Flowers as the buyer for the majority of its breads, including Wonder, Butternut, Home Pride, Merita and Nature's Pride.
• Facebook says it's buying the Atlas advertising business from Microsoft. Atlas makes ad management and measurement tools for businesses. It's one of the businesses of Microsoft's ill-fated $6.3 billion purchase of aQuantive in 2007. The purchase comes as Facebook tries to increase revenue from advertising, particularly on mobile services. Facebook hasn't disclosed what it's paying for Atlas.
• The White House says President Barack Obama intends to designate Edith Ramirez to be chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission. Ramirez has been an FTC commissioner since 2010. She'll replace Jon Leibowitz, who announced his resignation this month after four years at the helm of the watchdog agency.