Stocks rise, Nasdaq jumps to record high amid Q3 GDP miss, drop in jobless claims

·Reporter
Thu, October 28, 2021, 4:33 PM·6 min read
  • Stocks gained Thursday, with the S&P 500 and Dow resuming advances even after a new print on U.S. economic activity came in weaker-than-expected. The Nasdaq Composite jumped more than 1% to set a record intraday high.

Investors on Thursday digested some key new economic prints, including the first estimate of third-quarter U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) and weekly unemployment claims. The GDP report showed the economy decelerated to expand at the slowest rate in over one year for the July through September quarter, with the Delta variant and supply-side constraints capping economic activity. GDP rose at a 2.0% annualized rate, missing estimates for the 2.6% pace consensus economists anticipated.

But even given this weakness, and some of the other tepid economic data seen as of late, equity investors have remained resilient and pushed stocks to record levels.

“The market is right to look through some of the third-quarter weakness. A lot of what we’ve seen lately in terms of softness in the data is not really a destruction or disappearance of demand, it’s simply a matter of supply chains that are forcing demand into the future,” Simona Mocuta, State Street Global Advisors chief economist, told Yahoo Finance Live. “There is still a lot of strength ahead of us. There is a lot of money waiting on the sidelines in consumer savings and checking accounts that I think bodes well for 2022.”