LIVE MARKETS-Dow, S&P 500 make it eight straight as earnings resonate

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DOW, S&P 500 MAKE IT EIGHT STRAIGHT AS EARNINGS RESONATE

Wall Street's main indexes jumped to around one-month highs on Thursday, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq .IXIC leading gains, as strong quarterly results from heavyweights Microsoft MSFT.O and Meta META.O pointed to a resilient outlook for the technology sector.

Tech .SPLRCT, up more than 2%, posted the biggest rise among S&P 500 .SPX sectors, and the Magnificent Seven ETF MAGS.K rallied more than 3%.

With the session's gains, the Dow .DJI has now risen eight days in a row. The blue-chip average last rose eight straight days in May of last year. The Dow last rose nine days in a row in December 2023.

The S&P 500 has now also risen eight days in a row. The benchmark index last rose eight straight days in August of last year. The last nine-day run of gains was in November 2004.

The Nasdaq and S&P 500 both ended back above their closely watched 50-day moving average (DMA) for the first time since February 20 and 21 respectively. The Dow has yet to join them in this feat. It last closed above its 50-DMA on February 28.

Quarterly reports from Amazon.com AMZN.O and Apple AAPL.O, after the bell on Thursday, will no doubt have potential to influence Friday's trading.

That said, on Friday, markets will also be reacting to the latest nonfarm payroll data. Expectations call for 130k jobs to have been added in April vs 228k in the prior month. The unemployment rate is forecast to be 4.2% which would be flat vs March.

Average hourly earnings are expected to come in at 0.3% month-over-month and 3.9% year-over-year vs 0.3% and 3.8% in the prior month.

Meanwhile, going into Friday's jobs report, the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield US10YT=RR, which is now around 4.21% vs Wednesday's 4.175% close, is on pace to end its run of seven-straight days of declines.

Here is a snapshot of where markets stood just moments after 4 p.m. ET:

(Terence Gabriel)

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