(Reuters) – U.S. stock times rose Thursday ahead of data likely to fall in weekly jobless claims, while tech-heavy Nasdaq appeared to be rebounding after a 2% fall in the session before that.
The Nasdaq Composite, home of last year’s best-performing stocks including Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Tesla Inc, has plummeted this month as rose economic forecasts raised demand for valueless stocks including energy, mining and industry companies.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and Finance Secretary Janet Yellen reiterated Wednesday’s optimism about a strong U.S. economic recovery, with Powell saying the most likely scenario is 2021 “a very strong year. ”
Labour’s weekly jobless claims report, the fastest indicator of economic health, is expected to show that claims fell to 730,000 in the week ending March 20 from 770,000 the previous week.
Economically sensitive bank stocks of JPMorgan Chase & Co, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America were up between 0.2% and 0.8% in pre-sale trading.
Heavy-duty technology stocks of Facebook Inc, parent of Alpha Alphabet Inc and Twitter Inc rose between 0.3% and 0.5% ahead of their senior ex-Congress testimony about terrorism and misinformation on their services.
At 6:54 am ET, Dow e-minis went up 76 points, or 0.24%, S&P 500 e-minis went up 9.75 points, or 0.25%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis went up 48.25 points, or 0.38%.
Shares of Nike Inc fell 4.1% when the sporting goods giant slammed the back of Chinese social media over its comments about reports of forced labor in Xinjiang.
U.S. shares of Baidu Inc, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and JD.Com Inc were laid down after the U.S. securities regulator took steps that would kick foreign companies from stock exchanges if they did not comply with U.S. audit standards.
Reporting by Devik Jain in Bengaluru; Edited by Maju Samuel