Wall Street rises ahead of Friday's jobs report and upcoming Fed interest rate meeting
Big Tech stocks helped power the market higher on Wall Street on Thursday as investors looked to Friday's key piece, November’s jobs data, which will hopefully decide what the Fed will do with the benchmark interest rate next week when they meet on 12-13 December.
At the closing bell on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) trading floor, the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average added +62.95, or +0.2%, to 36,117.38.
The broad-based Standard & Poor’s 500 Index climbed +36.25 points, or +0.8%, to 4,585.59, while the rich-tech Nasdaq Composite Index jumped +193.28, or +1.4%, to 14,339.99.
U.S. stocks rebounded Thursday behind strong gains in tech shares as Google parent Alphabet jumped +5.3%, as it demonstrated its new Gemini artificial intelligence model that the company said could outperform human experts in several areas of problem-solving, math, physics, history, law, medicine and ethics.
Alphabet's jump brings its year's gain to just over +55%.
Other big tech stocks also rose, with Apple, Amazon, and Nvidia adding at least +1% of gains.
On Thursday, the Labor Department issued its weekly jobless claims report, which showed that U.S. jobless claims rose slightly last week.
Initial unemployment claims for the week ending Dec. 2 rose by 1,000 from the previous week to 220,000.
The Yields on Treasurys, which rise when their prices fall, eased lower with the yield on the 10-year Treasury, which helps set rates for mortgages and other economy-dictating loans, settled at 4.16%, while the policy-sensitive two-year yield, which tends to reflect the Fed's market expectations of future moves, finished at 4.61%.
Meanwhile, in cryptocurrency, Bitcoin displayed a round of profit-taking in front of the near-term target at US$49,000,00 after changing hands within the parameters of US$43,282.00 to US$43,509.00, last at US$43,508.00.
Meanwhile, Ethereum, the world’s second-largest blockchain by cryptocurrency market capitalization, remained above the US$2,300 objective after changing hands within a daily range of US$2,222.00 to US$2,382,80 and last at US$2,378.00.
Assessing the technical studies for Ethereum, a sustained break above the US$2,300.00 resistance may generate a greater bullish call to US$2,700.00 – reassess from there as profit-taking is expected – which could follow a significant downturn.
Precious metals were mixed, with spot gold at $2,028 per ounce, while silver closed at $23.82.
Energy markets were weaker, with the global benchmark Brent at $75.16 per barrel and the U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate at $70.28.
The U.S. Dollar Index (U.S. DXY), which measures the greenback's strength against six counterparts on the foreign exchange markets, is lower to 103.58.
Meanwhile, the Eurodollar was at 1.0788, and the British pound finished at 1.2588. The Japanese yen ended at 143.46, while the Australian dollar was firmer at 0.6602.
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