US stocks moved higher on Thursday afternoon, helped by strong results from Alibaba, a rebound in tech stocks and as upbeat jobless claims data indicated the labour market was improving despite moderate economic growth. The three major indices were poised to end two straight sessions of losses, exacerbated on Wednesday by Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen's comments that equity valuations "generally are quite high".
The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits held near a 15-year low last week, suggesting positive momentum in the economy, even though growth stumbled badly last quarter. "A lot of the market is really focused on Friday's payroll report which should give us a good indication if the weak first-quarter data was really due to just weather," said David Carter, chief investment officer at Lenox Wealth Advisors in New York. Wall Street had a choppy start to the session as Yellen's comments and the continued sell-off in the global bonds weighed on investors. At 13:22 pm EDT (1722 GMT) the Dow Jones industrial average was up 99.73 points, or 0.56 percent, at 17,941.71, the S&P 500 was up 8.86 points, or 0.43 percent, at 2,089.01 and the Nasdaq Composite was up 28.43 points, or 0.58 percent, at 4,948.07.
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