Latest data push US stocks higher ahead of NFP

In tumultuous trading on Thursday, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq gained, aided in part by a surge in Alphabet shares as investors anticipated new jobs data in the wake of recent indications of a slowing economy.

Alphabet Inc. increased by 3.5%, and Microsoft increased by 2.2%, both of which contributed more than any other stock to the session’s gain for the S&P 500. The Wall Street Journal claimed that Alphabet’s Google division intends to upgrade its search engine with capabilities utilizing artificial intelligence.

Initial jobless claims decreased to a seasonally adjusted 228,000 for the week ending April 1 compared to forecasts of 200,000 claims, adding to recent data that point to a sluggish labour market.

The Labor Department’s data from the previous week was updated to reflect the receipt of 48,000 extra applications. Wall Street has recently been losing momentum for days in response to indications that the economy is slowing down, including mediocre statistics on private payrolls and job vacancies earlier this week.

This was a departure from recent months, when investors hailed weak economic news on the theory that it would indicate that the Fed’s interest rate hikes were having the desired effect and that the Fed should now relax its efforts to tame inflation that had reached decades-high levels.

Traders are divided about whether the Fed will raise its target rate or keep it steady at its upcoming May meeting. The market is trying to decide whether the ‘growth and recession’ scare or the ‘Fed hiking’ scare are more meaningful to prices, and so it’s waffling between whether a softening labour market is good news because it gets the Fed to pause in May or bad news because it means the recession is actually coming.

Now the focus is on the more thorough report on non-farm payrolls, which is predicted to have grown by 239,000 in March, down from the 311,000 jobs added in the previous month. This report is due on Friday, which is Good Friday in the US, when the stock market will be closed.

After starting the session lower, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq rose in the afternoon session. The majority of the S&P 500’s constituents were down for the day, with decreasing equities outnumbering rising ones by a ratio of 1.3 to one, even though the index traded in the green territory.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average increased by 0.01% to 33,486.93 points, while the Nasdaq increased by 0.74% to 12,085.48 points. Six of the 11 sector indices of the S&P 500 fell, with materials losing 0.47% and energy falling 0.85%.

Next week will mark the beginning of the quarterly reporting season for a number of large corporations, including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup. Investors are anticipating updates on the sector’s health in the wake of the recent banking crisis.