S&P 500 closes little changed as traders gear up for May payrolls report: Live updates

The S&P 500 closed near the flatline on Thursday, with investors largely in wait-and-see mode ahead of the jobs report on Friday.

The S&P 500 slipped 0.02% to close at 5,352.96, while the Nasdaq Composite pulled back 0.09% to 17,173.12. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 78.84 points, or 0.20%, to finish the session at 38,886.17.

— Brian Evans

Friday’s nonfarm payrolls report for May is forecast by economists to show U.S. unemployment at 3.9%, according to FactSet. If the jobless rate comes in at 3.9% or less, that will prove “the longest stretch of sub-4% unemployment since the early 1950s,” according to a research report this week by Deutsche Bank macro strategist Henry Allen.

U.S. unemployment was below 4% for 27 consecutive months in the late 1960s, but the last time there was a run of 28 months or more was the early 1950s, Allen wrote. “Time will tell if the early-1950s offer a good parallel, but if these similarities do hold, there could be a lot of scope for optimism. In particular, low unemployment has often been a spur to productivity growth, as firms find it more difficult to hire workers and become more focused on helping their existing staff to be more productive. Given the growth of AI in our own time, this suggests there could well be some upside risk to economic growth over the years ahead.”

The early 1950s saw a run of 35 months when unemployment was below 4%. That has never been exceeded since.

— Scott Schnipper

Nvidia’s rally this year has truly been unrelenting, so much so that its relative strength index — a measure used by traders to gauge a stock’s momentum — has been above 70 nearly half the time this year, according to traders at Jefferies.

RSI above 70 typically suggests a stock is overbought, a sign it may be due for a pullback. The traders pointed out that is the most amount of time a tech, media and telecom stock has been in overbought territory in more than five years.

— Fred Imbert

These are some of the stocks making big moves midday:

• Five Below — Shares of Five Below sank 12% after the discount retailer fell short of Wall Street’s first-quarter revenue estimates and offered disappointing guidance. For the current quarter, Five Below said it expects between $830 million and $850 million in revenue, while analysts polled by LSEG expected $883 million.
• Salesforce — The stock moved 2.7% higher following news that Salesforce board member and co-CEO of activist investor ValueAct, Mason Morfit, has increased his stake in the software company to just under $1 billion. The move was made earlier this week and comes just days after the company reported its first revenue miss since 2006.
• Lululemon — Shares added 5.7% following the athletic apparel retailer’s earnings beat. Profit per share came in at $2.54 versus the $2.38 expected from analysts polled by LSEG. Revenue was $2.21 billion, topping the consensus estimate of $2.19 billion. Lululemon issued weak guidance for the current quarter, but its full-year earnings per share guidance was above expectations.

Click here to see the full list.

— Sean Conlon

Instacart shares tracked for their best session since early October after announcing a buyback.

The food delivery platform gained more than 8% in midday trading. If that holds through session close, it will mark the stock’s best day since Oct. 10, when shares climbed more than 9%.

Thursday’s rally comes after the company said it would repurchase as much as $500 million in aggregate of its common stock.

Shares of Salesforce rose more than 3% after ValueAct revealed that it hiked its stake in the software giant, according to regulatory filings released Thursday.

Salesforce board member and ValueAct co-CEO Mason Morfit acquired nearly $100 million worth of shares earlier this week, bringing his total position to nearly $1 billion, or around 3.9 million shares.

— Rohan Goswami, Samantha Subin

Shares of bitcoin miner Core Scientific jumped about 7.5% on Thursday after the company confirmed it had rejected an unsolicited nonbinding proposal from CoreWeave on Monday to acquire the outstanding shares of the company for $5.75 per share.

On Tuesday, Core announced a 12-year deal to provide about 200 MW of infrastructure to host CoreWeave’s high-performance compute services, which is projected to generate $3.5 billion in revenue for the miner. Morgan Stanley said the transaction “highlights the potentially high value of converting crypto mining sites to data centers.” BTIG raised its price target on Core following the announcement to $10 from $8.

— Tanaya Macheel

Stocks opened little changed on Thursday, with investors largely on standby until Friday’s jobs report.

The S&P 500 ticked up 0.03%, while the Nasdaq Composite added 0.1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded near the flatline.

— Brian Evans

Economic data released Thursday morning showed jobless claims and the trade deficit moving higher, while labor costs were less than expected.

• Initial filings for unemployment benefits for the week ending June 1 totaled 229,000, up 8,000 from the previous week and higher than the 220,000 estimate, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Continuing claims were little changed at 1.79 million.
• The trade deficit for April rose to $74.6 billion, up $6 billion from March but lower than the $76.5 billion Dow Jones estimate, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
• Revisions showed nonfarm productivity up 0.2% for the first quarter while unit labor costs increased 4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Economists were looking for flat productivity and a 5% rise in labor costs.

— Jeff Cox

These are some of the stocks making notable moves in premarket trading:

• Robinhood — The online brokerage rose more than 3% after revealing a $200 million deal to purchase crypto exchange Bitstamp.
• Five Below — The discount retailer slid 15.8% following weak current-quarter revenue guidance.
• Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical — The biopharma stock added nearly 4% following an upgrade to buy from neutral at Goldman Sachs.

Click here for the full list.

— Alex Harring

The European Central Bank lowered benchmark interest rates Thursday for the first time in nearly five years, taking the lead for global central banks on policy loosening.

In a widely expected move, the ECB cut its three key rates by 25 basis points, or 0.25 percentage points. That takes the respective rates on refinancing, marginal lending and deposits to 4.25%, 4.5% and 3.75%.

A statement accompanying the decision noted that inflation has continued to recede over the past few years and the “inflation outlook has improved markedly.” The ECB last lowered rates in September 2019.

— Jeff Cox

It is a sleepy morning for many of the biggest stocks on Wall Street, but not Nvidia.

Shares of the chip giant rose nearly 2% in premarket trading, making it the biggest mover among the largest stocks Thursday morning. The stock appears to be continuing its momentum from an afternoon rally on Wednesday that pushed its market cap above $3 trillion.

Other major heavyweights, such as Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon, were hovering within 0.25% of their closing level from Wednesday.

— Jesse Pound

June is off to a sluggish start, but patient investors could be rewarded with strong gains when the second half of the year begins, according to Goldman Sachs’ Scott Rubner.

“New quarter (Q3), new half year (2H), this is when a wall of money comes into the equity market quickly,” Rubner wrote in a note Wednesday. He noted that roughly 9 basis points of new money enters the market every July. “On $29 Trillion in assets, that is $26B in modelled July inflows.”

“In addition, I am seeing a re-emergence in retail traders during the summer, they tend to come around in July,” he added.

— Fred Imbert

European stocks opened higher Thursday as traders anticipated the first interest rate cut from the European Central Bank since September 2019.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 was up 0.6% in early deals, with all major bourses and the vast majority of sectors in the green.

The U.K.’s FTSE index is seen opening 0.1% higher at 8,258, Germany’s DAX was 0.5% higher at 18,642, France’s CAC 40 was up 0.4% at 8,037 and Italy’s FTSE MIB was 0.4% higher at 34,657.

Australian exports fell 2.5% year on year in April to hit their lowest level since 2021, with goods exports amounting to 43.32 billion Australian dollars, or $28.91 billion.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics said the decline was driven by metal ores and minerals. Imports to Australia fell 7.2% year on year.

Due to the lower imports, the country’s trade surplus for April surged to AU$6.55 billion, more than the revised AU$4.84 billion and beating Reuters expectations of an AU$5.4 billion surplus.

— Lim Hui Jie

Multinational electronic contract manufacturer Foxconn has reported a 22% year-on-year rise in revenue in May.

The company reported a revenue of 550.16 billion new Taiwan dollars, a record high for May.

Foxconn also said the second quarter was a traditionally “off-peak” season, but due to higher-than-expected demand from Al servers, “current visibility for the second quarter is expected to beat expectations.”

Shares of Foxconn, which trades as Hon Hai Precision Industry in Taiwan, climbed 2.56% on Thursday.

— Lim Hui Jie

Shares of Japanese investment firm SoftBank Group Corp. surged more than 5% on Thursday, extending their 4.6% gain from the previous session.

Activist investor Elliott Management has rebuilt a stake worth more than $2 billion in SoftBank and is pressing for a $15 billion share buyback.

Separately, Tempus AI, a health-care technology company backed by Softbank, is targeting a valuation of up to $6.10 billion for its U.S. initial public offering, according to SEC filings.

— Lim Hui Jie, Rohan Goswami

Big Tech names, including artificial intelligence darling Nvidia, are taking over this rally, and their hot streak raises the question of whether it may be time to sell a few holdings.

There is more to rebalancing your portfolio than just selling highly appreciated positions, however, according to Blair duQuesnay, certified financial planner and investment advisor at Ritholtz Wealth Management in New Orleans.

Rather, pruning a few winning positions and then redeploying those proceeds in other asset classes can help resolve distortions in your portfolio.

Here’s where to begin.

— Darla Mercado

Here are a few stocks making notable moves in extended trading:

• Lululemon Athletica — The athleisure company jumped about 9% after posting first-quarter results that beat Wall Street’s estimates on the top and bottom lines.
• Five Below — The discount retailer tumbled 15% after issuing disappointing guidance on revenue for the second quarter.

See the full list here.

— Darla Mercado, Samantha Subin