U.S. stocks ended higher after choppy trade Thursday, as Wall Street cheered over positive earnings reports and continued oil recovery. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 125.18 points, or 0.79 percent, to 16,069.64. The S&P 500 added 10.41 points, or 0.55 percent, to 1,893.36. The Nasdaq Composite Index gained 38.51 points, or 0.86 percent, to 4,506.68.
Facebook, Inc. spiked 15.52 percent to 109.11 U.S. dollars apiece Thursday following the release of its strong quarterly results. The social network reported that its total revenue during the fourth quarter of 2015 came in at 5.84 billion dollars, from 3.85 billion dollars in the fourth quarter of 2014, up 52 percent.
Caterpillar Inc. jumped 4.73 percent to 61.08 dollars apiece after posting quarterly earnings above consensus but revenues shy of forecast, as its full-year 2016 outlook topped market expectations.
Shares of Alibaba reversed early gains to end 3.77 percent lower Thursday, though the Chinese e-commerce giant delivered quarterly results that beat market estimates.
Oil prices continued to rally Thursday, logging the first three-day winning streak of 2016, boosted by the speculations that major producers may cooperate to cut production. The West Texas Intermediate for March delivery moved up 92 cents to settle at 33.22 dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, while Brent crude for March delivery increased 79 cents to close at 33.89 dollars a barrel on the London ICE Futures Exchange.
On the economic front, U.S. new orders for manufactured durable goods in December decreased 12.0 billion dollars, or 5.1 percent, to 225.4 billion, well below market consensus, the Commerce Department announced Thursday. "The trend in durable orders and shipments keeps getting worse. Given the Fed's muted stance in yesterday's FOMC minutes, we hope they realize the risks to the economy are mounting to the downside, " said Jay Morelock, an economist at FTN Financial. In the week ending Jan. 23, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial jobless claims was 278,000, a decrease of 16,000 from the previous week's revised level, said the U.S. Labor Department Thursday. The Pending Home Sales Index crawled 0.1 percent to 106.8 in December from a downwardly revised 106.7 in November, according to the National Association of Realtors Thursday.
The CBOE Volatility Index, often referred to as Wall Street's fear gauge, fell 2.99 percent to end at 22.42 Thursday.
In other markets, the U.S. dollar declined against most major currencies on Thursday as the country's economic data for durable goods orders came out worse than expected. In late New York trading, the euro rose to 1.0958 dollars from 1.0900 dollars in the previous session, while the dollar bought 118.78 Japanese yen, higher than 118.70 yen of the previous session. Gold futures on the COMEX division of the New York Mercantile Exchange fell slightly on Thursday after the Federal Open Market Committee meeting did not result in a rate increase. The most active gold contract for April delivery edged down 0.2 dollar, or 0.02 percent, to settle at 1,116.10 dollars per ounce.
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