Stocks recently ran into a sudden flurry of selling pressure, which sent the Dow briefly into the red and dropped both the Nasdaq and the S&P to the neutral line. Stocks have since made a modest bounce back.
The dollar has dropped to a fresh session low. It is now down 0.5% against a basket of major foreign currencies. Meanwhile, the euro is up 0.6% and near the session high that it set amid news of a solid debt auction from Ireland.
U.S. stocks advanced modestly Thursday as investors welcomed a bigger-than-expected drop in weekly jobless claims and hoped that the market’s recent battering has been overdone.
As it stands The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 27 points, boosted by rare encouraging news from the labor market.
Initial unemployment claims declined by 31,000 to 473,000 in the week ended Aug. 21, the Labor Department said in its weekly report. New claims for the previous week, ended Aug. 14, were revised upward to 504,000 from 500,000. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had predicted filings would decline by 10,000.
In a troubling sign, however, the four-week moving average, which aims to smooth volatility in the data, rose by 3,250 to 486,750, the highest since Nov. 28, 2009.
