May 20 (UPI) — U.S. markets rebounded from a three-day losing streak on Thursday as unemployment numbers reached another pandemic-era low.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 188.11 points, or 0.55%, while the S&P 500 gained 1.06% and the Nasdaq Composite closed the day up 1.77%.
Despite Thursday’s gains, the Dow remains down 0.9% for the week, while the S&P 500 has lost about 0.4% and the Nasdaq is expected to end with slight gains.
Thursday’s reversal was partially fueled by a Labor Department report showing that 444,000 workers filed jobless claims last week, a decline of 34,000 from the previous week and the fewest reported in 14 months.
A rebound in tech stocks also boosted the market’s growth as the so-called FAANG stocks all increased. Apple stock grew 2.1%, Facebook gained 1.6%, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, climbed 1.56% and Amazon closed the day up 0.49%.
Thursday also saw bitcoin prices rebound, trading up 3% at about $40,000 around markets closing.
Bitcoin rose as high as 9% to above $42,000 but dropped sharply to around $30,000 after the Treasury Department announced steps to crack down on cryptocurrency markets and transactions including requiring any transfer worth $10,000 or more to be reported to the Internal Revenue Service.
“Cryptocurrency already poses a significant detection problem by facilitating illegal activity broadly including tax evasion,” the agency said in a release.
Crypto-related stocks Tesla and Coinbase rose 4.14% and 3.83% respectively.
