Wall Street's three main stock indexes were up more than 1 percent each in Thursday's early trade, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite returning to positive territory for the year, as investors bet on US economic recovery from the reopening of businesses from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic despite job losses in the millions
NEW YORK (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 07th May, 2020) Wall Street's three main stock indexes were up more than 1 percent each in Thursday's early trade, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite returning to positive territory for the year, as investors bet on US economic recovery from the reopening of businesses from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic despite job losses in the millions.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the broadest equities gauge on the New York Stock Exchange, was up 1.4 percent at 23,999 at 10:00 a.m. (14:00 GMT), thirty minutes after its open.
The S&P 500, barometer for the top 500 US stocks, rose 1.5 percent to 2,890.
The Nasdaq rose 1.4 percent to 8,978 on the day, and showed a 0.06 percent gain on the year. It was the first of the three major US stocks indexes to return to positive territory since the impact of the COVID-19 drove Wall Street into bear territory in March.
About 33 million Americans lost their jobs over the past seven weeks as most non-essential businesses across the 50 US states shuttered to control the spread of the virus, before many began reopening last week, Labor Department data showed. The US Treasury and Federal Reserve have also made trillions of Dollars of stimulus money available to aid the recovery of financial markets and the economy.
"Stocks are still trading at a heavy discount and now they have trillions of extra dollars of stimulus behind them, like fuel on the fire," Craig Erlam, analyst at New York's OANDA, said. "This was always likely to eventually make a rebound far more explosive than it should otherwise be."
The United States has been the country worst hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, with some 1.2 million Americans infected and more than 73,000 fatalities.
