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11:26 a.m. ET: Nasdaq 9,000
The tech heavy index briefly crossed the 9,000 mark for the first time ever.
Meanwhile, the S&P 500 is also trading at a record high 3,235.
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9:41: a.m. ET: S&P and Nasdaq set new record highs
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq set new intraday highs in early trading. The S&P 500 got as high as 3,231.05 and the Nasdaq touched 2,979.16.
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9:30 a.m. ET: Stocks open higher
Stocks opened higher across the board Thursday and continued their strong run headed into year-end.
Here were the main market moves, as of 9:30 a.m. ET:
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S&P 500 (^GSPC): +0.17%, or 5.36 points
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Dow (^DJI): +0.11%, or 30.96 points
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Nasdaq (^IXIC): +0.20%, or 18.23 points
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Crude oil (CL=F): +0.26% to $61.27 per barrel
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Gold (GC=F): +0.58% to $1,513.50 per ounce
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8:38 a.m. ET: #TBT last year’s epic rebound
Last December came with a major market selloff that sent the S&P 500 down 20.0% from its Sept. 21, 2018 intraday high of 2940.91 to its Dec. 24, 2018 intraday low of 2351.1.
Dec. 26 was the beginning of a major market comeback with the Dow jumping 1,086 points, it’s biggest single-day point gain in history.
Read more about it in Yahoo Finance’s Morning Brief.
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8:30 a.m. ET: Initial jobless claims fall
Weekly initial claims for unemployment insurance fell to 222,000, down from 235,000 a week ago. Economists were expecting the number to decline to 220,000.
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8:10 a.m. ET: Futures point higher following reports of holiday spending growth
U.S. stock futures indicted a higher open across the major indices Thursday, as stocks continue their strong run headed into year-end.
Here were the main pre-market moves, as of 8:05 a.m. ET:
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S&P futures (ES=F): +0.14%, or 4.50 points
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Dow futures (YM=F): +0.10%, or 27 points
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Nasdaq futures (NQ=F): +0.11%, or 9.75 points
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Crude oil (CL=F): +0.11% to $61.18 per barrel
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Gold (GC=F): +0.43% to $1,505.60 per ounce
With Christmas in the rearview mirror and the holiday shopping season drawing to a close, new data from Mastercard revealed total U.S. retail sales from Nov. 1 to Dec. 24 jumped 3.4% from the same period last year. Mastercard SpendingPulse tracks online and in-store purchases using all forms of payment. Shoppers preferred to use digital channels, with online sales surging 18.8% from last year and represented 14.6% of total sales. In-store sales rose a more modest 1.2%.
E-commerce behemoth Amazon (AMZN) announced that it had a record-breaking holiday season in a press release Thursday. Most notably, the company said more people tried Prime memberships this holiday season than any previous year. In just one week, more than 5 million new customers started Prime free trials or began paid memberships worldwide, according to Amazon. Furthermore, during the holiday season, the number of Prime Free One-Day and Prime Free Same-Day delivery nearly quadrupled from the same period last year.
Some of the best-selling items on Amazon during the holiday shopping season included toys, fashion, home and beauty products. Additionally, the number of Prime members who tried grocery delivery for the first time during the holiday season increased by a whopping 80%.
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Heidi Chung is a reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter: @heidi_chung.
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