The National Association of Realtors added a little fuel to the market-rising fire today with their October Pending Home Sales report (found here). The report states that pending home sales increased by 10.4 percent in October.
Also bolstering investor confidence was an article on Reuters reporting that Cyber Monday sales on November 29th were more than $1 billion, a 16 percent increase over last year’s numbers.
But it wasn’t all good economic news today. According to the Department of Labor initial jobless claims climbed last week to 436,000, which is an increase of 26,000 claims. This is bad news especially following last week’s report which showed a decrease of 34,000 claims. You can see this week’s full report here.
Investors didn’t let the jobless claims report bother them too much, instead carrying yesterday’s rally over to today. As a result, the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 107.24 points to 11,363.02 while the Nasdaq rose 29.92 points to 2,579.35. The S&P 500 rose 15.45 points to 1,221.52.
Asian and European markets were all up on Thursday with the United Kingdom’s FTSE 100 gaining 2.22 percent.
Stocks in the news: JPMorgan Chase and Co (NYSE: JPM), Pepsico Inc (NYSE: PEP), Vimm-Bill’-Dann Produkty Pitaniya OAO (NYSE: WBD).
