By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- U.S stock markets surged at the open again on Thursday, shrugging off another gloomy set of weekly jobless claims data and concentrating on the prospect of a new post-election world without either the extremes of either Donald Trump or Nancy Pelosi.
The race for the White House has still not been decided, although Joe Biden has strengthened his position with narrow wins in Michigan and Wisconsin. President Donald Trump meanwhile, has already launched multiple legal actions to stop the counting of votes he considers illegal, and has demanded a formal recount in Wisconsin.
Meanwhile, The Hill reported earlier that House Democrats are considering a new leader after their surprising losses in the House on Tuesday and their failure to achieve a clear victory in the Senate. Those results have been interpreted by many as a rejection of the party's more left-wing ideas.
By 9:35 AM ET (1335 GMT) the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 357 points, or 1.3%, while the S&P 500 was up 1.7% and the NASDAQ Composite was up 2.2%.
All three indexes had risen sharply on Wednesday in the aftermath of the election as it became apparent that the Democratic Party’s showing in Congressional elections was likely to restrict its ability to push through radical progressive reforms.
Among individual stocks, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) stock rose 3.1% on the morning after a filing showing that founder Jeff Bezos has now sold $10 billion worth of stock this year, a sharp acceleration over previous years. Whether Bezos was pre-empting a possible rise in capital gains tax under a Democratic Congress isn't clear.
Amazon's Chinese counterpart Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) fared less well, losing another 3.8% to its lowest in over a month after results that showed a clear slowdown in sales growth. Both Alibaba and Amazon have been big winners of the pandemic, which has accelerated the shift into the digital world for many companies and shoppers. However, sentiment toward Alibaba has clouded over since Chinese regulators suspended the blockbuster IPO of its financial services affiliate Ant Group earlier this week.
Elsewhere, General Motors (NYSE:GM) stock rose 3.6% after it reported a $4 billion profit in the third quarter, some 60% above forecasts. The company notched an operating margin of 15% in its home market in North America. For context, that's over 13 times Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA)'s third-quarter profit of $300 million. At $400 billion, Tesla's market value is still eight times that of GM.
Gold miner Barrick (NYSE:GOLD) stock rose 6.2% after it reported record revenues thanks to the surge in gold prices during the quarter.
Earlier, the Labor Department had said the number of Americans filing initial jobless claims stuck stubbornly above 750,000 last week, a day ahead of an official labor market report for October that is likely to show a sharp slowdown in hiring from September.
The numbers may elicit some comment from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell in his press conference at 2:30 PM ET, after the Federal Reserve's policy meeting. The Fed isn't widely expected to change policy so close to the election, but the Bank of England joined the Reserve Bank of Australia overnight in increasing monetary stimulus to their respective economies, while the European Central Bank last week all-but confirmed it would do so at its December meeting.