US stocks are in the green for a second day in a row, with the Dow up 250 points around midday.
The Dow rose 1.1%, or 270 points, while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite both climbed 1%.
The market is not reacting much to weekly jobless claims that economists are paying so much attention to, in great measure because the number of lost jobs was widely expected. Touted as the closest economic data point to real-time developments, the weekly first-time claims for unemployment insurance are now the pulse point for how the crisis is affecting Americans. In the past five weeks, 26.5 million people have filed first-time jobless claims.
These are staggeringly big numbers. But the fact that the initial claims data has moderated for three consecutive weeks now should be seen as a positive for risk assets,” said Shaun Osborne and Juan Manuel Herrera, currency strategists at Scotiabank, in a note.
Weekly claims are still in the millions, but have come off their peak of 6.9 million in the last week of March.