US close: Stocks higher following weekly jobless report

Wall Street stocks closed higher on Thursday as traders thumbed over this week's jobless claims report from the Labor Department.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.78% at 35,064.25, while the S&P 500 was down 0.60% at 4,429.10 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 0.78% firmer at 14,895.12.

The Dow closed 271.48 points higher on Thursday, cutting into losses recorded in the previous session.

Thursday's main focus was an update on the current US employment picture, with the Department of Labor's latest weekly initial jobless claims report showing first-time jobless claims in the US were little changed during the week ended 31 July.

In seasonally adjusted, terms the number of initial unemployment claims fell by 14,000 to reach 385,000 last week. Economists had been anticipating a print of 384,000. However, secondary claims shrank by 366,000 to reach 2.93m and the four-week moving average of initial claims drifted lower to 394,000.

Elsewhere on the macro front, outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas said job cuts announced by US-based employers fell 7.5% to 18,942 in July, the lowest level seen since June 2000.

Lastly, the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis announced that June's goods and services deficit was $75.7bn, up from May's revised figure of $71.0bn. Exports rose $1.2bn to $207.7bn and imports increased $6.0bn to $93.2bn.

Also in focus, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note was trading higher at around 1.224% on Thursday after having briefly fallen below 1.13% in the previous session.

In the corporate space, Roku shares slipped following its latest quarterly results overnight, while Etsy fell as much as 12% after its full-year guidance seemed to indicate that the Covid-19 fuelled commerce boom was coming to an end.

Robinhood shares were also firmly in the red after closing the previous session 50.41% higher, while Moderna shares were broadly flat despite revealing it had swung to a quarterly profit.