Thursday's Stock Market Open: US Equities Rise Despite Another Huge Jobless Claims Report, Oil Jumps

Update: 12:05 p.m. EDT:

U.S. stocks continued to rally as of noon on Thursday.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 426.46 points to 24,091.46, while the S&P 500 gained 53.21 points to 2,901.63 and the Nasdaq Composite Index rose 146.19 points to 9,000.57.

In Europe markets finished higher, as Britain’s FTSE-100 rose 1.4%, while France’s CAC-40 climbed 1.54% and Germany’s DAX gained 1.44%.

Crude oil futures jumped 7% at $25.67 per barrel, Brent crude rose 3.63% at $30.80

Original story:

U.S. stocks opened higher on Thursday as traders appear to be more optimistic about the gradual reopening of the economy, offsetting another huge jobless claims figure.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 242.81 points to 23,907.45, while the S&P 500 rose 37.88 points to 2,886.30 and the Nasdaq Composite Index gained 114.45 points to 8,968.84.

The Labor Department said on Thursday that initial jobless claims amounted to 3.17 million last week, raising the total to more than 33 million over the past seven weeks since the country went into lockdown due to coronavirus.

On Friday, the Labor Department will release its April jobs report.

Timothy McBride, a health economist and professor at Washington University in St. Louis, tweeted: “With another 3.2 million filing for unemployment in last week and 33.5 million over 7 weeks, my rough estimate suggests that adding these 33.5 million people to the unemployed in U.S. means that our unemployment rate is likely higher than 20% and may be above 23%.”

The Bank of England kept its interest rate policy unchanged and suggested it might expand monetary stimulus by next month. The BoE also warned the U.K. faces a very deep recession.

The central bank of Norway unexpectedly cut its interest rate to zero.

China’s General Administration of Customs said on Thursday that exports rose by 3.5% in April, defying expectations of a 15.7% decline.

“We remain concerned about the potential for the pandemic to have lasting effects on growth,” said Ron Temple, co-head of multi-asset and head of U.S. equity at Lazard Asset Management. “Countries and companies are likely to exit the crisis with significantly higher debt, curtailing their ability to invest and innovate.”

Overnight in Asia, markets closed lower. The Shanghai Composite fell 0.23%; Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slipped 0.65%; while Japan’s Nikkei-225 edged up 0.28%.

In Europe markets traded higher, as Britain’s FTSE-100 rose 1.01%, while France’s CAC-40 climbed 1.21% and Germany’s DAX gained 1.01%.

Crude oil futures jumped 9.88% at $26.36 per barrel, Brent crude rose 6.49% at $31.65. Gold futures rose 0.55%.

The euro slipped 0.06% at $1.0788 while the pound sterling fell 0.2% at $1.2316.