US markets end mostly lower on Thursday

05 Jun 2020 Evaluate

The US markets ended mostly lower on Thursday, following the strong upward move seen over the past several sessions, as traders took a breath to digest the recent strength on Wall Street, which lifted the Nasdaq-100 to a record intraday high in early trading. Traders seemed reluctant to make more significant moves ahead of the release of the Labor Department's closely watched monthly jobs report on Friday.  Street currently expect employment to tumble by about 8.0 million jobs in May after plunging by 20.5 million jobs in April. The unemployment rate is expected to jump to 19.8 percent from 14.7 percent. The Labor Department released a report showing the pace of decline in first-time claims for unemployment benefits has begun to stall a bit.

The report showed initial jobless claims tumbled to 1.877 million in the week ended May 30th, a decrease of 249,000 from the previous week's revised level of 2.126 million. However, street had expected jobless claims to slump to 1.800 million from the 2.123 million originally reported for the previous week. Jobless claims pulled back further off the record high of 6.867 million set in the week ended March 28th, although the number of new claims since the coronavirus lockdowns now exceeds 42.6 million. The report also showed an unexpected increase in continuing claims, a reading on the number of people receiving ongoing unemployment assistance, which jumped by 649,000 to 21.487 million in the week ended May 23.

Nasdaq declined 67.1 points or 0.69 percent 9,615.81 and S&P 500 was down by 10.52 points or 0.34 percent to 3,112.35, while Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 11.93 points or 0.05 percent to 26,281.82.

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