Stocks fall as jobless claims top 30 million in six weeks but cap best month since 1987

U.S. stocks fell Thursday as 30 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits over the past six weeks in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Major averages, however, still posted their best month in decades on hope about curbing the disease.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 288.14 points to close at 24,345.72. The blue-chip average climbed 11.1% in April, its best month since 1987. The Standard & Poor’s 500 fell 0.9% to end at 2,912.43. The broad index rose 12.7% for the month, also its largest one-month gain since 1987.

The monthlong rally came as the Federal Reserve and Congress announced aggressive measures to help the economy weather the fallout from the widespread business shutdowns and stay-at-home guidelines put in place to fight the pandemic. 

Fresh data Thursday showed how badly the pandemic has crippled the U.S. economy, with roughly 3.8 million people filing for unemployment last week, the Labor Department said. Jobless claims, which provide the best measure of layoffs across the country, were lower than the 4.4 million who filed the week before and down from the all-time high of 6.86 million applications in late March. That brings the total to about 30 million Americans that have filed for unemployment benefits over the past six weeks.

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GDP: U.S. economy shrank 4.8% in the 1st quarter amid state shutdowns, millions of layoffs

“Thankfully, for now, the economic contagion seems to have plateaued, with the number of new weekly claims falling for the third week in a row,” Andrew Stettner, senior fellow at nonpartisan think tank The Century Foundation, said in a note. “But we’re still at a level that is a mortal threat to the nation’s financial well-being and a moral emergency for policymakers.”

On Thursday, some big tech titans reported results for the first quarter that weren’t as bad as investors had braced for, which helped limit the market’s losses. Facebook rose 5% after it reported trends in advertising revenue stabilized in April following a steep drop-off in March. Microsoft inched up 1% after reporting better-than-expected results for the first quarter. Those are two of the biggest stocks in the S&P 500, which give their movements outsized heft on the index.

Stocks rose a day earlier in the U.S., driven by optimism about a possible treatment for the coronavirus. Gilead Sciences' experimental drug remdesivir was reported to be effective against the new coronavirus in a study run by the National Institutes of Health. The nation’s top infectious diseases expert said the drug reduced the time it takes patients to recover, raising hopes that life around the world may eventually tiptoe back toward “normal.”

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