US stocks on Thursday registered a trifecta of milestones and closing records, registering a notable end, considering the political turmoil that shook the world a day ago, but failed to make the update to the stock market unfeasible. The Dow Jones Industrial Average [: DJIA] closed up 0.7% to end at a mark above 31,000, the S&P 500 SPX index,
closed 1.5% to a mark above 3,800, closing at around 3,804, while the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP,
it ended well above 13,000, driven by a reinvigorated appetite for technology names after a poor performance of the index on Wednesday after the second round of Senate elections in Georgia. The Nasdaq Composite closed up 2.6% to 13,067. Investors largely looked beyond Wednesday’s violent clash between pro-Trump protesters and focused on better-than-expected non-manufacturing reports, with the Supply Management Institute’s service index rising to stage a unexpected recovery in its index from 55.9 to 57.2 in December. In addition, weekly claims for unemployment benefits were almost stable last week, dropping to 787,000, from 790,000 revised the previous week. In corporate news, Tesla Inc. TSLA,
ended in a record helping to make CEO Elon Musk the richest man in the world, surpassing Amazon.com’s AMZN,
Jeff Bezos. Investors will be watching Friday’s jobs report closely for clues to the health of the economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
