The US markets ended marginally higher on Thursday even as volatility continued to be the dominant force in Wall Street's tumultuous September. The choppy trading on markets came following the release of a mixed batch of US economic data, which added to recent uncertainty about the economic outlook. The Labor Department released a report showing an unexpected uptick in first-time claims for US unemployment benefits in the week ended September 19th. The report said initial jobless claims inched up to 870,000, an increase of 4,000 from the previous week's revised level of 866,000. The modest increase surprised economists, who had expected jobless claims to drop to 843,000 from the 860,000 originally reported for the previous week.
Meanwhile, the Commerce Department released a separate report unexpectedly showing another significant increase in new home sales in the US in the month of August. The Commerce Department said new home sales jumped by 4.8 percent to an annual rate of 1.011 million in August after skyrocketing by 14.7 percent to an upwardly revised rate of 965,000 in July. Street had expected new home sales to pull back by 1.2 percent to a rate of 890,000 from the 901,000 originally reported for the previous month. With the unexpected increase, new home sales surged up to their highest level since reaching 1.016 million in September of 2006.
Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 52.31 points or 0.2 percent to 26,815.44, Nasdaq rose 39.28 points or 0.37 percent 10,672.27 and S&P 500 was up by 9.67 points or 0.3 percent to 3,246.59.
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