If most Americans had never heard of Wall Street titan Edward Liddy before the financial crisis they knew his name only too well by the end of last spring.The former CEO of Allstate (ALL) famously came out of retirement in September 2008 to take over a bankrupt AIG. He was installed by the Federal Reserve and worked for a salary of $1 per year out of a sense of patriotic duty according to remarks by Liddy and others including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. After enduring a public firestorm in March over the now-notorious AIG bonus scandal when the company ...

Broad gains in other areas offset insurance weakness.

Among the shares expected to see active trade in Thursday's session are those of the retailers as well as Allstate, Cigna, Cisco, CareFusion, Dr Pepper Snapple, i2, MetroPCS, MF Global, Netsuite, News Corp., Qualcomm, Sirius XM, THQ and Time Warner Cable.

Among the shares expected to see active trade in Thursday's session are those of Starbucks, CBS, Nvidia and Nasdaq.

Allstate Corp. swings to a quarterly profit as the auto insurer benefits from a lack of major catastrophes and avoids big investment losses that it suffered last year.