US stocks rise after weekly jobless claims fall

The major US stock indices opened higher on Thursday, after the release of upbeat economic data.

The US Department of Labor showed that the unemployment claims were at 310K last week from 345K, better than forecasts of 343K.

The European Central Bank decided today to keep the benchmark interest rates unchanged at 0% and also kept the deposit rate at -0.5%, which was widely expected.

The ECB also decided to keep the interest rates unchanged, and stressed on moving forward with the Pandemic emergency purchase programme (PEPP), which is worth 1.85 trillion euros per month until March 2022.

As for stocks, Dow Jones rose 0.4% or 125 points to 35,156 as of 14:20 GMT, and S&P 500 rose 0.3% or 13 point to 4,527, while Nasdaq rose 0.3% or 44 points to 15,330.