Stock Market today: The U.S. pending home sales hit the highest level of 19 months, the December Chicago PMI was better than expected. As the Italian government bonds were sold about 7 billion euros, the 3-year and 10-year notes’ yields fell, the investor optimism increase, pushing the U.S. stock market today to close higher. The energy source, consume and financial shares led the gains. As of 4:00 pm EDT, the Dow Jones industrial average index rose 135.63 points, or 1.12%, to 12287.04 points, the Nasdaq composite index added 23.76 points, or 0.92%, to 2613.74 points, the S&P 500 Index gained 13.38 points, or 1.07%, to 1263.02 points.
The U.S. Labor Department data released on Thursday showed that last week’s U.S. initial jobless claims reached 38.1 million with an increase of 381 thousand over the previous week. The basic trend of the number still shows that the U.S. labor market situation is continuing to improve, although the pace is not fast enough.
The U.S. Institute for Supply Management (ISM) Chicago branch released a report saying the December Chicago Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) fell slightly to 62.5 points, better than expected.
The U.S. National Association of Realtors (NAR) report was released showing in November 2011, the U.S. pending home sales growth was 7.3%, hitting the highest level of the rencent 19 months.
The Italian Prime Minister Monty called on the significant increase of the scale of the euro zone relief Fund on Thursday. But he declined to diclose the quantitative figures about how much capital was needed.
Italy auctioned a total of 7.017 billion euros long-term debts and the bond auction results showed a good demand. The planned issue scale was 50-85 million euros and the auction result closed to the target ceiling, while the yields were significantly decreased.
The Greece government, several Greek banks and the private sector holders of government bonds reached a replacement agreement in hope of reducing the high government debt burden of Greece, meanwhile addressing the differences between creditors and avoiding the debt default from happening.
As the latest data shows that the euro zone sovereign debt crisis led to the decline in inflationary pressuresof the European countries, so the European Central Bank will have more space to unveil the monetary policies of lowering interest rates to stimulate economic growth.
The British Charteredt alent Management and Development Association analysis survey report said, the UK unemployment will continue to rise in the next year, to reach about 2.85 million at the end of 2012, to 2.9 million in 2013 and the unemployment rate will increase from the current 8.3% to 8.8%.
The European stock market today: The Italian government completed a round of scheduled bond auction, as a result, the market got satisfied, while the U.S. stock market today opened higher, but also boosting the European stock market today’s rise in late trading session. The Pan-European Dow Jones index closed at 242.46 points on Thursday, up 0.94%.
The European stock market today rose across the board. Among the main area indices, the French CAC 40 index climbed 1.84% to close at 3127.56 points, the German DAX 30 index gained 1.34% to finish at 5848.78 points and the UK FTSE 100 index edged up 1.08% to end at 5566.77 points.
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