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World market indices high

26 November 2009 07:21 (UTC +04:00)

Baku- APA-Economics. Stocks edged higher in light volume Wednesday following a drop in weekly unemployment claims to the lowest level of the year and a rise in new home sales.
Trading volume was thin ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday. Light volume can exacerbate swings in the market.
The Labor Department said new claims for unemployment insurance fell by 35,000 last week to 466,000. That’s the fewest claims since the week ending Sept. 13, 2008, and far better than the 500,000 that economists had expected.
The news suggests the job market is slowly healing, but concern remains the improvement will be temporary as the weak economy continues to push unemployment higher. The jobless rate hit 10.2 percent in October and many analysts believe it will keep rising to 10.5 percent or higher before starting to improve next summer.
In other economic reports, new home sales rose 6.2 percent to an annual rate of 430,000 from 405,000 in September. Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters had expected a pace of 410,000.
Separately, the government also reported consumer spending rose a brisk 0.7 percent last month, following a 0.6 percent drop in September. It was the best showing since a big 1.3 percent jump in August when the government’s now-defunct Cash for Clunkers programs enticed people to buy cars.
Not all the day’s news was upbeat. Orders for expensive manufactured goods dropped 0.6 percent last month, following a 2 percent gain in September. It marked the first drop since August. Economists had expected orders would grow 0.5 percent.
Doug Roberts, chief investment strategist at Channel Capital Research, said investors are still worried about the sustainability of a recovery but are afraid of missing more of the market’s eight-month rally.
"People may not believe in this market but they’re reluctantly being pulled into it with each of these reports," he said.
In late morning trading, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 38.25, or 0.4 percent, to 10,471.96.
The broader Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 3.82, or 0.4 percent, to 1,109.47, and the Nasdaq composite index rose 7.90, or 0.4 percent, to 2,177.08.
The dollar fell against most other major currencies, while gold rose to another record.
A weakening dollar has bolstered commodities and stocks of energy and materials companies, helping pump up their stocks in the market’s eight-month rally.
Bond prices fell slightly, sending the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note up to 3.33 percent from 3.31 percent late Tuesday. The yield on the three-month T-bill rose to 0.05 percent from 0.03 percent.
Light, sweet crude rose 46 cents to $76.48 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
More than two stocks rose for every one that fell on the New York Stock Exchange, where volume came to 255.2 million shares compared with 316 million shares traded at the same point Monday.
Overseas, Japan’s Nikkei stock average rose 0.4 percent. In afternoon trading, Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.5 percent, Germany’s DAX index rose 0.3 percent, and France’s CAC-40 rose 0.5 percent.