Investing.com – Wall Street opened higher on Thursday, as strong jobs data pushed the Dow past 25,000 for the first time.
The S&P 500 rose 12 points or 0.46% as of 9:58 AM ET (14:58 GMT) while the Dow composite increased 138 points or 0.55% to 25,060.88 and tech heavy NASDAQ Composite was up 18 points or 0.26%.
The private sector added 250,000 jobs in December, the biggest rise since March, according to a report by ADP Research Institute on Thursday. The report is ahead of nonfarm payrolls data that comes out on Friday and includes public and private-sector employment.
Another report showed that jobless claims rose by 3,000 in the week ending December 30. Analysts had expected the number to fall.
Semiconductor Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) was among the top gainers after the morning bell, rising 6.67% after rebutting claims from rival Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) that some of its chips were impacted by a security flaw. Intel was down 4.16%.
Meanwhile computer manufacturing firm IBM (NYSE:IBM) increased 1.33% while payments processor Square (NYSE:SQ) inc jumped 2.63% and Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) surged 1.41%.
Elsewhere Walgreens fell 5.55% after reporting its quarterly profit fell by 22% while streaming device firm Roku Inc (NASDAQ:ROKU) decreased 6.41% and Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) slumped 2.56% after it fell short on its Model 3 deliveries.
In Europe stocks rallied. In Germany the DAX rose 188 points or 1.45% while France’s CAC 40 increased 76 points or 1.44% and in London the FTSE 100 gained 25 points or 0.34%. Meanwhile Spain’s IBEX 35 was up 166 points or 1.64% and the pan-European Euro Stoxx 50 surged 52 points or 1.49%.
In commodities, gold futures fell 0.20% to $1,315.80 a troy ounce while crude oil futures increased 0.15% to 61.72 a barrel. The U.S dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, fell 0.36% to 91.56.