U.S. stocks closed out 2009 on Thursday with their first annual advance in two years, underpinned by strength in technology and natural resource shares on bets that the recovery will brighten the profit outlook.

* Even so, with investors having driven the benchmark S&P 500 up more than 60 percent since the year's closing low in March, some profit-taking caused major indexes to finish Thursday's session in the red as investors sold some of the recent winners.

* The Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> fell 120.46 points, or 1.14 percent, to end unofficially at 10,428.05. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.SPX> declined 11.32 points, or 1.00 percent, to finish unofficially at 1,115.10. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.IXIC> lost 22.13 points, or 0.97 percent, to close unofficially at 2,269.15.

* The S&P 500 finished 2009 with a gain of 23.5 percent -- its biggest annual increase since 2003. That's a marked turnaround from 2008, when the S&P 500 tumbled 38.5 percent.

* For 2009, the Dow climbed 18.8 percent, while the Nasdaq jumped 43.9 percent.

(Reporting by Ellis Mnyandu; Editing by Jan Paschal)