The Dow Jones gained 0.61%, the Nasdaq index advanced 1.76% and the broader S&P 500 index rose 1.10%.

The S&P 500 ended Thursday at its highest closing level in nearly two months.

The star figure of the day was that of growth, which reached 2.9% at an annual rate in the fourth quarter in the United States, better than the 2.8% expected by economists, the United States Department of Finance said on Thursday. Trade.

"The economy continues to show itself to be very resilient despite the steep rate hikes," commented Chris Zaccarelli of the Independent Advisor Alliance, for whom "it is taking much longer to fall into recession than many imagined a while ago. a few more months."

Once is not custom, all the macroeconomic lights were green on Thursday, with in particular the new weekly jobless claims, which fell to their lowest level since April 2022.

"It's the opposite of what we read in the headlines at the moment," commented Nick Reece, of Merk Investments, in reference to announcements of redundancy plans, mainly in the technology sector.

Another noteworthy fact was the surge in durable goods orders in December (+5.6%), the pace of which was more than double what economists expected (+2.5%).

Even the real estate market, which has been contracting for several months, has picked up, with an acceleration in sales of new homes in December compared to the previous month.

Despite this picture of a sunny US economy, the bond market reacted only modestly.

The yield on 10-year US government bonds rose to 3.49% from 3.44% the day before closing.

A few weeks ago, "when the data was good, we worried that the Fed (American central bank) would be more offensive" in terms of its monetary policy, recalls Nick Reece, which often made the indexes and drive up bond rates.

"But today, the good news is well taken and the bad news is negative," he continues.

"It's a more normal relationship" between indicators and markets.

An economy in better health than expected, rates that are stabilizing, the observation has encouraged investors to turn to technology, growth or simply neglected stocks in 2022.

Meta (+4.10%), Alphabet (+2.51%) and Microsoft (+3.07%) were particularly in demand, but it was Tesla who won the bet (+10.97%), at the day after the post-market publication of record results that exceeded expectations.

Investors did not hold it against the manufacturer for the slight contraction in its margins linked in particular to price cuts.

Since January 3, Tesla has taken almost 50%.

Mastercard fell (-1.37% to 377.14 dollars) despite better than expected results, operators worried about a deceleration in the growth of the credit and payment card specialist.

Southwest Airlines was penalized (-3.32% to 35.68 dollars) for the publication of a net loss of unexpected magnitude, mainly attributable to the monster disruptions experienced by the company during the passage of the storm at the end of December. winter Elliott, which cost him $800 million.

Its rival American Airlines fared better (+2.15% to 16.61 dollars), having done better than estimates in the fourth quarter.

The online news site BuzzFeed was propelled (+119.88% to 2.09 dollars) by an article from the Wall Street Journal reporting on a partnership with Meta to help content creators on Facebook generate more traffic.

The announcements of social plans have been multiplying for several weeks.

Wednesday was the turn of the computer company IBM (-4.50% to 134.43 dollars) to unveil a program of 3,900 job cuts.

© 2023 AFP