Stocks Finish Stronger After a Shaky Start

Stocks closed higher on Wall Street Thursday after shaking off some wobbles from earlier in the day. Gains for banks and industrial companies offset weakness in Big Tech stocks including Facebook and Microsoft, per the AP. The Dow rose 199 points, or 0.6%, to 32,619; the S&P 500 rose 20 points, or 0.5%, to 3,909, the latest ebb in the back-and-forth trading it’s gone through the last few weeks. The index is still down slightly for the week. The Nasdaq rose 15 points, just 0.1%, to 12,977, while a measure of small-company stocks jumped 2.3%. Treasury yields continued to stabilize. Generally, investors have been moving money away from expensive tech stocks as part of a broader shift to stocks tied more closely to economic growth.

There's a good chance the recovery could be surprisingly strong with little interference from the Federal Reserve, said Andrew Slimmon, portfolio manager at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. “There is a very clear message that the Fed is going to sit back and let the economy grow at a hotter rate because their number one priority is unemployment,” he said. “That means there’s a good chance the economy overshoots.” Also on Thursday, the government reported that the number of workers filing for unemployment benefits fell last week to the lowest level since before the pandemic.

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