US close: Stocks end session despite better-than-expected jobless claims report

Wall Street closed lower on Thursday as some better than expected jobless claims data was offset by concerns surrounding a rise in new cases of Covid-19.

At the close, the Dow Jones was down 0.43% at 34,879.38, while the S&P 500 was 0.46% weaker at 4,493.28 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 0.25% softer at 15,248.25.

The Dow closed 151.69 points lower on Thursday, extending losses recorded in the previous session after the Labor Department's job openings and labor turnover survey revealed that openings outnumbered the unemployed by more than 2.0m in July.

Thursday's primary focus was the jobless claims report, with first-time weekly unemployment claims undershooting market forecasts by a wide margin in the seven days ended 4 September. According to the Department of Labor, in seasonally adjusted terms, initial unemployment claims dropped by 35,000 to 310,000. Economists were expecting to see initial claims slip from 340,000 to 335,000.

The four-week moving average of initial claims, which aims to smooth out the variations in the data from one week to the next, declined by 16,750 to 339,500, while secondary unemployment claims, those referencing the week finished on 28 August, fell by 22,000 to approximately 2.78m.

US traders were also tuned into the European Central Bank, with rate-setters in Frankfurt deciding to lower bond purchases under their emergency asset buying programme "moderately" but kept all the other main policy levers unchanged, including the size of the bond buying programme not linked to the pandemic.

In its policy announcement, the European Central Bank said that favourable financing conditions could now be maintained with a "moderately" lower pace of purchases under the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme than in the prior two quarters. It did not specify for how long that lower pace would apply.

In the corporate space, athletics retailer Lululemon shares rallied more than 10% after posting better-than-expected quarterly earnings, while Boston Beer stock slipped 3.83% after pulling guidance amid slower-than-anticipated adoption of its hard seltzer products.

Multiple US airlines lowered their full-year forecasts amid a resurgence in Covid-19 cases as a result of the Delta variant, with United Airlines, American Airlines and Southwest Airlines all providing cautious comments.

GameStop traded higher on the back of a narrower-than-expected loss, while Moderna stock also rose after announcing it was in the process of developing a single-dose vaccine that combines boosters against both Covid and the flu.