US markets end higher on Thursday

22 Mar 2024 Evaluate

The US markets ended higher on Thursday, magnifying their previous session’s gains, as stocks continued to benefit from positive reaction to Wednesday's monetary policy announcement by the Federal Reserve. While the Fed left interest rates unchanged, as widely expected, the central bank also maintained its forecast for three interest rate cuts this year. Further, support also came in as the Labor Department released a report unexpectedly showing a slight drop by first-time claims for U.S. unemployment benefits in the week ended March 16th. The Labor Department said initial jobless claims edged down to 210,000, a decrease of 2,000 from the previous week's revised level of 212,000. The dip surprised participants, who had expected jobless claims to rise to 215,000 from the 209,000 originally reported for the previous week.

Meanwhile, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) released on report showing existing home sales unexpectedly continued to soar in the month of February. NAR said existing home sale index spiked by 9.5 percent to an annual rate of 4.38 million in February after jumping by 3.1 percent to a rate of 4.00 million in January. The continued surge came as a surprise to participants, who had expected existing home sales to pull back by 1.5 percent to a rate of 3.94 million. With the unexpected increase, existing home sales reached their highest level since hitting an annual rate of 4.530 million in February 2023. On the sectoral front, Semiconductor stocks continued to see significant strength on the day, resulting in a 2.3 percent surge by the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index. Chipmaker Micron (MU) helped lead the sector higher, soaring by 14.1 percent after reporting better than expected fiscal second quarter results and providing upbeat fiscal third quarter guidance.

Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 269.24 points or 0.68 percent to 39,781.37, Nasdaq surged 32.43 points or 0.2 percent to 16,401.84 and S&P 500 was up by 16.91 points or 0.32 percent to 5,241.53.


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