Stocks End Higher; Euro-Zone Bond Buying, Jobless Claims Surprise

Stocks finished near their best levels of the day, rallying on comments by European Central Bank President Mario Draghi who said everything is now in place for the bank to buy bonds of troubled eurozone countries such as Spain and Italy. He added that the aid does not need to come with steep penalties. Shares also were supported by a drop in new unemployment insurance claims in the U.S. last week. Financial and material stocks helped pace today's advance as gold and crude oil both surged in commodities trade.

The late-day surge also picked up momentum after the release of minutes from the Sept. 12-13 Federal Open Markets Committee meeting. While traders already knew the Federal Reserve was moving forward with its third round of quantitative easing, policy-makers last month discussed setting specific numerical targets that would trigger the end of bond-buying by the U.S. central bank.

Most of the FOMC members appeared to agree targets were a good idea but left a final decision to future meeting, according to the Fed minutes.

The weekly Labor Department report on new unemployment claims helped get Thursday's session off to a strong start, with new applications for jobless benefits rising only 4,000 people to 367,000 during the week ended Sept 29. That was 3,000 fewer than the 370,000 new claims experts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting and also fueled mild speculation tomorrow's job report for September could beat tepid expectations.

Earlier today, the Bank of England left its key interest rate unchanged at a record-low 0.5%. The ECB, meanwhile, kept its benchmark interest rate at 0.75%.

Commodities surged again today on liquidity expectations by the central banks. Crude oil for November delivery rose 4.1% to settle at $91.71 a barrel. November natural gas was up a penny at $3.40 per 1 million BTU. December gold rose $16.30 to $1796.20 an ounce while December silver rose 42 cents to $35.09 an ounce. December copper rose 1 cent to $3.79 a pound.

Here's where the markets stood at end-of-day:

Dow Jones Industrial Average up 80.75 (+0.60%) to 13,575.36

S&P 500 up 10.41 (+0.72%) to 1,461.40

Nasdaq Composite Index up 14.23 (+0.45%) to 3,149.46

GLOBAL SENTIMENT

Hang Seng Index up 0.09%

Shanghai China Composite Index up 1.45%

FTSE 100 Index up 0.03%

UPSIDE MOVERS:

(+) CLRX, Announced multi-year partnership agreement with Life Technologies Corp (LIFE) to develop and commercialize the company's technology for use with LIFE's cancer diagnostics tools. Financial terms of the agreement were not immediately disclosed.

(+) VRNG, Continuing Wednesday's gains of more than 30% after a federal judge ordered settlement talks with Google Inc. (GOOG) over pending patent litigation. The judge refused to end the case in Google's favor, according to documents, StreetInsider reported. The talks are scheduled for October 9th.

(+) NIHD, Names Juan R. Figuereo as executive vice president and CFO, effective October 17, 2012. Figuereo will replace Gokul Hemmady, who was recently named NII Holdings' COO.

(+) CUR, Providing an update on the Phase I trial to test use of spinal cord stem cells to treat Lou Gehrig's disease next week at an industry conference in Boston.

DOWNSIDE MOVERS:

(-) NUVA, Expects Q3 revenue to be about $147 million, down from prior forecast for flat sequential revenue growth from Q2 and also trailing the analyst consensus of $153.8 million.

(-) INFA, Expects Q3 revenue in the range of $189 million to $191 mln, below the analyst consensus of $201 million on Capital IQ.

(-) HMSY, Forecasts full year revenue of $480 million to $490 mln, down from its prior view of $500 million to $515 million. Also cuts expected adjusted EPS.

(-) BPAX, Enters all-stock merger agreement with ANI Pharmaceuticals Inc., with BPAX as the surviving company.