Stocks on Thursday closed modestly higher, led by technology-related companies, against a backdrop of grim economic news and plans by the government to restart long-dormant economies while preventing a fresh outbreak of the deadly pandemic.
What are major indexes doing?
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.14% closed 33.33 points, or 0.1%, higher to reach 23,537.68, hamstrung by an 8% loss in shares of Boeing Co. BA, -8.04%, while the S&P 500 SPX, +0.58% advanced 0.4%, or 11.90 points, to end at 2,787. The Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +1.65% outperformed its equity-index peers, rising 140.75 points, or 1.6%, to close at 8,734.75.
What’s driving the market?
Uncertainty about the outlook for the business climate in the aftermath of the coronavirus is still swirling around, but negative economic reports didn’t stop investors from picking up health-care and technology-related stocks, which helped to propel the market higher.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq gained, while Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, +4.35% and Netflix NFLX, +2.91% rose 4.4% and 2.9%, respectively. Thursday’s gains put Netflix up 36% year to date and Amazon up 30.3%.
Talk of reopening economies shut down due to the effort to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic were credited with helping equities bust through a string of downbeat reports.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump on Thursday was expected to announce guidelines that would allow states to begin reopening certain activities, while other parts of the world, like Germany, are taking steps to restart their economies.
“News that the lockdown is coming to an end will be the ultimate pickup for stocks. However, this needs to come hand in hand with evidence that a second wave of coronavirus infections isn’t around the corner,” said Fiona Cincotta, market analyst at City Index.
Investors pored over a parade of woeful U.S. data on Thursday, with initial jobless claims figures at 5.25 million, enough to push the unemployment rate to at least 15%. More than 22 million Americans have lost their jobs in the past month.
“Today’s data suggest that weekly increases in claims seem to be past their peak,” said Andrew Grantham of CIBC Economics. “Also, for the third week in a row, the print for continuing claims (lagged one week vs initial claims) came in below the consensus expectation.” That suggests that “at least some of the claims have been short-term in nature,” Grantham added.
The data on Thursday, which including housing starts at its worst monthly decline sine 1984 and a poor reading of business activity in the Philadelphia area, came after ugly economic reports on Wednesday.
Read:Jobless claims soar again by 5.25 million as coronavirus pushes unemployment to 15%
Which companies are in focus?
- Shares of BlackRock Inc. BLK, +3.59%, the world’s largest asset manager, booked a 3.6% gain after reporting first-quarter profit that came in below expectations but saw revenues beat forecasts.
- Railroad-car maker Greenbrier Companies Inc. GBX, -2.68% on Thursday said it has laid off 3,700 people, or more than 20% of its workforce, this fiscal year, because of the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.Shares fell 2.7%.
- Shares of Abbott Laboratories ABT, +5.56% rose 2% after sales and EPS both beat consensus forecasts.
- Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. INO, +10.50% shares jumped 10.5% after the company said it had received grant money to fund a COVID-19 clinical trial.
- Rite Aid Corp. RAD, -21.06% Shares of tumbled 21% on Thursday after the pharmacy chain said it had wider-than-expected losses in the fourth quarter.
- Morgan Stanley’s MS, -0.10% profit fell 30% in the first quarter, the last big U.S. bank to lurch through a period of stress wrought by the coronavirus. Shares ended down 0.1%.
- Shares of Starbucks Corp. SBUX, +1.32% rose 1.3% on Thursday after CEO Kevin Johnson said the company would start gradually to reopen stores in May.
- Shares of UnitedHealth Group Inc. UNH, +5.94% surged nearly 6% helping the Dow notch a modest gain.
How did other markets trade?
One day after notching its largest daily yield drop since March 23, the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note TMUBMUSD10Y, 0.623% dipped 2.8 basis points to 0.609%. The yield is down 14.2 basis points over the past two sessions.
Crude oil for May delivery CLK20, -0.95% was little changed on the New York Mercantile Exchange settled at $19.87 a barrel. June gold GCM20, -0.28% on Comex fell by $8.50, or 0.5%, to settle at $1,731.70 an ounce after touching an earlier high of $1,768 an ounce.
The ICE U.S. Dollar Index DXY, +0.63% rose 0.6%. The gauge measures the dollar against a basket DXY, +0.63% of six currency rivals.
In Europe, the FTSE 100 FTSE, +0.61% closed up 0.6%, the Stoxx Europe 600 Index SXXP, +0.57% finished 0.6% higher, while the Shanghai Composite Index SHCOMP, +0.31% ended 0.3% higher and Japan’s Nikkei 225 Index NIK, -1.32% closed down 1.3%.
See:Hedge funds finally did in March what they are supposed to do
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