NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are rising for a second day in early trading Thursday, as Wall Street recoups some more of its losses following a week of sudden, jarring shifts.
The S&P 500 was up 0.7% after the first 30 minutes of trading. It follows up on a wild stretch where the index went from its worst three-day slump since June directly into its best day in nearly three months.
Tech stocks have been at the center of the market’s swings, hurt by criticism that their recession-defying surge in recent months was overdone. The Nasdaq, which is full of tech stocks, was up 1% and on pace for a second day of gains, but it’s still below its record set last week after dropping 10% from last Thursday through Tuesday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 148 points, or 0.5%, at 28,088, as of 10 a.m. Eastern time.
The day’s headline economic report showed that 884,000 workers applied for unemployment benefits last week. The number was flat from last week’s tally, which was revised higher, and it’s the lowest it’s been since the number of layoffs began surging across the country in March due to the coronavirus pandemic.
But the tally was still higher than economists expected, and it’s an indication that layoffs remain stuck at a dispiritingly high level. Economists called the report disappointing.
A separate report showed that inflation remains very weak at the wholesale level, though it was stronger last month than economists had forecast. The Federal Reserve has said that it’s willing to allow inflation to run higher than its target level before raising interest rates, if inflation had been too low before that. That’s key for investors because low rates can boost stock prices.
Treasury yields held relatively steady following the reports, and the yield on the 10-year note was flat at 0.70%.
The market’s focus continues to be on big technology stocks, in large part because they’ve grown so big that their movements can move broad market indexes almost by themselves. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and Google’s parent company alone account for 23% of the S&P 500, for example.
Many analysts say the recent tumult for technology stocks isn’t that surprising given how high they had soared. Apple more than doubled in less than five months through the pandemic, Tesla surged 74.1% last month alone and Zoom Video Communications earlier this month was up nearly 573% for 2020.
While Big Tech is indeed benefiting from the shift to online life that the pandemic and ensuing stay-at-home economy has accelerated, critics said their stocks prices simply shot too high. This past week’s sell-off blew off some of that steam, but the path of least resistance seems to still be higher, at least for now.
Apple rose 1.5%, Tesla was up 5.3% and Zoom gained 3.4%.
European stock markets were making modest moves. The German DAX returned 0.4%, and the French CAC 40 added 0.3%. The FTSE 100 in London ticked up 0.1%.
Asian markets were mixed. Japan’s Nikkei 225 and South Korea’s Kospi both rose 0.9%. The Hang Seng in Hong Kong slipped 0.6%, and stocks in Shanghai lost 0.6%.
Benchmark U.S. crude slipped 0.3% to $37.93 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, dipped 0.2% to $40.70 per barrel.
