A first in five weeks: Two up days for blue-chip stocks
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Blue-chip share indexes on Thursday managed to pull off a trick that has eluded them for five weeks: a second consecutive winning session.
It’s another positive sign for market bulls who want to believe that Wall Street’s vicious May sell-off has run its course.
The Dow Jones industrial average recovered from a midday dip to close up 5.74 points, or less than 0.1%, to 10,255.28. Combined with Wednesday’s 225-point rally, the Dow posted its first two-day advance since April 28-29.
Likewise for the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, which rose 4.45 points, or 0.4%, to 1,102.83 after a 2.6% surge on Wednesday.
Broader indexes also were higher, with the Nasdaq composite rising almost 1%.
Traders noted that the market gained despite another slide in the euro, which fell to a fresh four-year low of $1.216 from $1.224 on Wednesday, in part on worries about southern Europe’s debt crisis spreading to Hungary.
The euro’s plunge in May was one of the forces destabilizing financial markets worldwide, and is a continuing negative for U.S. exporters. But the European currency’s woes may be losing their ability to shock equity investors.
Stock buyers also were willing to step up despite mixed retail sales reports for May, and ahead of what has become the most important monthly economic statistic: employment.
The government’s report Friday on May job growth is expected to show a net gain of more than 500,000 jobs, though many of those are expected to be temporary census-worker positions.
Art Hogan, chief market analyst at Jefferies & Co. in Boston, said U.S. stocks were showing more signs of “what a market looks like when you exhaust the selling pressure.”
The S&P 500 dived 12.3% from April 23 to May 26, the biggest pullback since the market began to rebound in March 2009 from the credit-crisis-induced crash. The S&P is up 3.3% since May 26.
-- Tom Petruno