U.S. stocks kept falling on geopolitical tensions

U.S. stocks pared early gains to end lower Thursday after the U.S. dropped "the mother of all bombs" in Afghanistan.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 138.61 points, or 0.67 percent, to 20,453.25. The S&P 500 lost 15.98 points, or 0.68 percent, to 2,328.95. The Nasdaq Composite Index decreased 31.01 points, or 0.53 percent, to 5,805.15.

The U.S. military has dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb in Afghanistan on an Islamic State target, the Pentagon said Thursday.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday gave the order for the U.S. military to drop a GBU-43 or Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb on an IS cave complex in Nangarhar Province in Afghanistan, the first time such a bomb has been used in combat.

"The strike was designed to minimize the risk to Afghan and U.S. Forces conducting clearing operations in the area while maximizing the destruction of ISIS-K fighters and facilities," the Pentagon said in a statement.

The MOAB, which weighs about 22,000 pounds, is nicknamed "Mother Of All Bombs".

On the economic front, the Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand declined 0.1 percent in March, seasonally adjusted, missing market consensus, the U.S. Labor Department reported Thursday.

On an unadjusted basis, the final demand index rose 2.3 percent for the 12 months ended March 2017, the largest increase since moving up 2.4 percent for the 12 months ended March 2012.

In a separate report, the department announced that in the week ending April 8, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 234,000, a decrease of 1,000 from the previous week's revised level.

In corporate news, Shares of J.P. Morgan fell 1.17 percent to 84.40 U.S. dollars apiece Thursday even though the U.S. bank delivered better-than-expected quarterly earnings. Endit