As the poor estimated economic data, the U.S. stock market fell closed down Thursday. The Nasdaq Compostie index plunged 2.44%; the Standard & Poor’s 500 500 index tumbled 2.23% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.96%, recording the second largest decline since the beginning of this year.
At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 12,573.57 points, down 250.82 points, or 1.96%; the Standard & Poor’s 500 index was at 1325.51 points, down 300.18 points, or 2.23%; the Nasdaq composite index was at 2859.09 points, down 71.36 points, or 2.44% .
The U.S. Labor Department announced that initial jobless claims 387,000 in the week ended June 16, worse than expected. According to the Bloomberg survey, economists on average expected this figure would be 38 million. In initial jobless claims was 386,000 in the previous week.
After the opening bell of the U.S. stock market, the U.S. government released economic data, showing that the Philadelphia Fed manufacturing index declined to -16.6 in June from -5.8 in May; second hand house sales fell 1.5%, to 4.55 million.
The U.S. Conference Board reported that the leading economic indicator climbed 0.3% in May, better than expected. This is the only bright spot in today’s U.S. economic data.
The U.S. Federal Reserve announced the extension to “twist”, by continuing selling short-term bonds and buy long-term bonds to suppress the long-term interest rates. However, market participants had been more looking forward to a more strong measure by the Federal Reserve, that is, the third round of quantitative easing (QE3), but the “twist” disappointed those investors.