Thursday’s stock gains helped the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 end three-day losing streaks ahead of Friday’s crucial jobs data.
With the blue-chip Dow rising 62.95 points, or 0.17%, to 36,117.38, the broad S&P 500 increased by 0.80% to 4,585.59. Overperforming technology firms helped the Nasdaq Composite rise 1.37% to 14,339.99.
Alphabet, parent company of Google, saw gains of more than 5% as investors applauded the company’s introduction of its Gemini artificial intelligence platform. Furthermore adding more than 2% and 9%, respectively, were AMD and Nvidia.
With a rise of roughly 0.2% over the week, the Nasdaq has also exceeded. It looks like the S&P 500 and Dow will end the week down 0.2% and 0.4%, respectively.
The Dow and S&P 500’s three-day losing runs were ended by Thursday’s advances, which began in October. These setbacks had sparked questions about whether the late-2023 rise was flagging. The three main indices are still expected to close the fourth quarter and the year higher, demonstrating the robustness of the earlier rally.
This week has seen a number of conflicting data releases, which has investors focused on the job market.
The weekly jobless claims data, which was issued on Thursday, fell short of economists’ projections, and a reading of the continuing jobless claims decreased, suggesting that the rate of layoffs hasn’t accelerated. The data initially caused the U.S. 10-year Treasury rate to spike, indicating worries about the health of the labour market in spite of the Federal Reserve’s attempts to control inflation. At 4.148%, the yield was last up about 3 basis points.
Employers added fewer jobs than expected, according to private payroll data released on Wednesday by economists.
Source (CNBC)
