Stocks continued to rise entering midafternoon trading Thursday, buoyed in part by investors believing that Europe was getting a handle on its finances and reports new jobless benefits claims declined.
One stock in the spotlight was Apple, who lost founder Steve Jobs on Wednesday to a long illness. The company?s shares dropped initially at the opening, but rose steadily afterward, trading up about 1.2 percent at 12:30 Eastern.
Also around that time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up nearly 1 percent. The S&P 500 rose 1.2 percent and the Nasdaq was 1.4 percent higher.
The European Central Bank said it would extend more emergency loans to banks, the Associated Press reported. The institution also said it would buy bank bonds to make it easier for them to lend. Investors have been worried the banks could get hurt if the Greek government defaults on its debt, causing its bonds to lose value.
Target, Nordstrom and other retailers reported sales that beat Wall Street's expectations. The gains suggested the U.S is not headed for another recession, the news service reported.
The Labor Department reported that jobless claims rose by 6,000 in the week ended Oct. 1 to 401,000 from a revised 395,000 the previous week. Economists polled by Reuters had expected claims to jump to 410,000.
"Perhaps employers are going about regular business and tired of the media gloom," chief economic strategist Andrew Wilkinson of Miller Tabak told Reuters.
James Paulsen of Wells Capital Management, exemplified some of the investor optimism. Explaining to CNBC why he's confident a recession in the United States will not happen, and contagion from Europe is "very remote."
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