By Yasin Ebrahim
Investing.com – The S&P continued to swing between gains and losses on Thursday, as a rally in Netflix and Amazon supported investor sentiment even as the latest surge in weekly jobless claims and plunge in manufacturing activity underscored the Covid-19 impact on the economy.
Dow fell 0.26%, or 60 points, theS&P 500 was up 0.17% and the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.91%.
Jobless claims surged by 5.2 million last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday, taking the four-week total to 22 million, wiping out nearly all of the 22.442 million jobs created since November 2009.
Adding to the round of dire manufacturing data seen this week, the Philadephia Fed's manufacturing index fell to a reading of -56.6, the lowest reading since reading since July 1980.
The gloomy economic background, driven by the Covid-19 pandemic, has prompted some to bet on companies expected to thrive in the new, albeit eerier, environment, like Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX), both of which hit all-time highs intraday, up about 3%.
Energy, meanwhile, weighed on the broader market as oil prices headed toward the lows of the day amid ongoing worries about a glut in supply.
Investor sentiment on oil, however, had been helped by reports the U.S. is mulling plans to pay domestic drillers to stop production in a bid to trim supply and save jobs.
Financials also contributed to the selling on Wall Street as the parade of weak earnings from the banks continued to stoke investor jitters.
Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) was flat after the bank reported a 30% drop in profit, adding to a string of quarterly results from Wall Street banks, including JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) and Citigroup (NYSE:C), showing a steep decline in profit.
BlackRock (NYSE:BLK), meanwhile, rose 4%, even as the asset manager reported that funds under management fell below $7 trillion after profit slumped 23%.
A 7% fall in Boeing (NYSE:BA) and a plunge in airline stocks, meanwhile, pushed industrials down more than 1%.
United Airlines (NASDAQ:UAL) down 11%, American Airlines (NASDAQ:AAL) off 9% and Southwest Airlines (NYSE:LUV) off 6%, were among the biggest declines.