Thursday brought another day of meaningful gains on Wall Street, as investors continue to celebrate, in part, something that hasn’t yet happened: another round of major fiscal stimulus from Capitol Hill.
On top of that, an earnings season euphoria that’s carried through from last week is also helping drive markets higher. More importantly, weekly initial jobless claims numbers came out, and the numbers were less depressing than analysts expected — although still dour by almost any measure.
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Roughly 1.2 people filed for unemployment benefits for the week ended Aug. 1, which is still a historically insane number. Before 2020, the record was 695,000. Either way, it was lower than the 1.4 million seen the week before and easily better than the 1.4 million claims Wall Street was bracing for.
All three major indices advanced, with the Nasdaq closing above 11,000 for the first time. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 185 points, or 0.7%, to finish at 27,386.
Shocker: Uber still losing money. Ride-hailing giant Uber (ticker: UBER) released second-quarter results on Thursday, with revenue falling 29% year over year but still surpassing analyst expectations. It also reported a wider-than-expected loss of $1.02 per share against expectations for losses of 86 cents per share.
That’s par for the course for Uber, which can lose billions each quarter without shareholders fussing too much. Analysts don’t expect the company to turn a profit in 2020 or 2021 — but the company is emphasizing the major growth in its delivery segment, which saw gross bookings surge 113% year over year.
Uber is doubling down on delivery, acquiring Postmates for $2.65 billion in July.
Bezos dumps $3.1 billion in stock. Amazon ( AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos, the richest person in the world, sold more than $3 billion in Amazon shares on Monday and Tuesday, according to regulatory filings. The sale is reportedly part of a preestablished trading plan. It’s also just a drop in the bucket for Bezos, who still holds more than 54 million shares of the e-commerce giant, a stake worth about $190 billion.
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1.2 Million New Jobless Claims; Uber Delivery Bookings Up 113% originally appeared on usnews.com
