U.S. stocks on Thursday set a record-breaking record-breaking highs and lows, reaching a remarkable end, given the political concerns that shook the world a day ago, but failed to derail the market update. values. The Dow Jones industrial average [: DJIA] closed 0.7% to end with a milestone above 31,000, the S&P 500 SPX index,
finished 1.5% to a milestone above 3,800, to close at around 3,804, while the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP,
it ended well above 13,000, driven by a renewed appetite for tech names after a poor index performance on Wednesday after Georgia’s Senate election. The Nasdaq Composite closed up 2.6% to 13,067. Investors looked largely at Wednesday’s violent clash between pro-Trump protesters and focused on better-than-expected non-manufacturing reports, with a services index from the Institute of Supply Management rising with an unexpected rise in its index to 57.2 in December, from 55.9. In addition, weekly unemployment claims were almost stable last week, going from 787,000 to 790,000 reviewed the previous week. In the corporate news, Tesla Inc. TSLA,
ended with a record high helping make CEO Elon Musk the richest man in the world, surpassing Amazon.com’s AMZN,
Jeff Bezos. Investors will be watching Friday’s job report on clues about the health of the economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic.