US stocks ended a fourth straight session on Thursday with gains buoyed by stocks of all stripes from banks to consumer-facing companies.
The S&P 500 rose 1.5%, putting the benchmark on its longest winning streak since March. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index rose 2.3%, also ending Thursday with its longest winning streak since March. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1.1%, or about 346 points.
Global markets were volatile this week amid a series of mixed economic data. A report on Thursday showed that US jobless claims rose to a six-month high last week, a sign that job growth is slowing.
Investors are generally anticipating economic data to weaken as the Federal Reserve continues to hike interest rates to curb inflation. According to analysts, the decisive factor will be how quickly or slowly the data deteriorate. Many are hoping that central bank policies will pull inflation back from the highs of recent decades without plunging the US into recession.
“What the market wants to see is that there’s some cooling in the job market, but they’re not going to want to see a crash,” said Kiran Ganesh, a multi-asset strategist at UBS.
Investors will next look to Friday’s jobs report. Economists polled by the Wall Street Journal expect US employers to have added 250,000 jobs in June, compared with a rate of 390,000 in May.
Stocks rose across the board on Thursday, with 10 of the 11 sectors on the S&P 500 recently in the green.
GameStop rose 15% after the retailer announced a 4-for-1 stock split on Wednesday.
Bed Bath & Beyond rose 22% after interim CEO Sue Gove announced the acquisition of 50,000 shares of the company in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Seagen’s shares rose 1.6% after the Wall Street Journal reported that Merck & Co. is in advanced talks to buy the cancer biotech in a deal valued at around $40 billion, or about $40 billion could have more.
WSJ’s Dion Rabouin explains how inflation is rising and why the Federal Reserve, Congress, the President and big corporations can all be held accountable. Figure: Ryan Trefes
In bond markets, the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield rose to 3.007% from 2.911% on Wednesday, while the yield on the two-year bond fell to 3.039% from 2.961%. When the latter exceeds the former, investors have what is known as a yield curve inversion: a market signal that has historically often preceded recessions.
Bond yields rise when prices fall.
In commodity markets, oil prices rallied after falling below $100 a barrel earlier in the week on fears a looming recession would reduce crude oil demand. U.S. crude rose $4.20, or 4.3%, to $102.73 a barrel, posting its biggest one-day percentage gain since May.
Natural gas futures surged 14% to $6.297 per million British thermal units after the US Energy Information Administration said domestic inventories fell by more than 12 percent after a weekly build that was significantly weaker than analysts and traders % were lower than normal expected for this time of year.
Overseas, the British pound rose against the dollar after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his resignation after more than 50 ministers and senior government aides resigned for 36 hours.
The British benchmark index FTSE 100 gained 1.1%. While currencies can be sensitive to political changes, analysts view UK equities as relatively isolated from the political turmoil in the UK, with FTSE 100 companies earning around 75% of their revenue outside the UK.
“It’s not fundamentally changing the path the UK is on,” said UBS’s Mr Ganesh. “With new leadership, it will still be about higher inflation [and] the United Kingdom’s trade relations with the European Union.”
US stocks have posted gains over the past few sessions.
Photo: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg News
The Stoxx Europe 600 rose 1.9%, while Germany’s DAX index rose 2%. European markets have calmed down in recent days after the Norwegian government intervened to end an oil workers’ strike that threatened to more than halve the country’s gas exports, a key source of energy for the region.
Asian markets were generally higher, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 up 1.5% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng up 0.3%. South Korea’s Kospi rose 1.8%, with shares in Samsung Electronics helping to post gains. Samsung’s stock rose 3.2% even after the company indicated its string of record-breaking results is likely to end as the economy slows and inflation rises.
—Ryan December contributed to this article.
Write to Chelsey Dulaney at [email protected] and to Akane Otani at [email protected]
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Corrections & Enhancements
Boris Johnson resigns as British Prime Minister on Thursday. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that he had already resigned. (Corrected on July 7.)
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