© Marketwatch MARKET PULSE
U.S. stocks on Thursday booked a trifecta of milestones and record closing highs, logging a remarkable finish, considering political unrest that rattled the world a day ago but failed to derail the updraft for the stock market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average [: DJIA] closed up 0.7% to end at a milestone above 31,000, the S&P 500 index ended 1.5% to a milestone above 3,800, to close at around 3,804, while the Nasdaq Composite Index finished well above 13,000, propelled by a reinvigoration of appetite for technology names following a weak performance for the index on Wednesday following the Georgia runoff Senate elections. The Nasdaq Composite closed up 2.6% to 13,067. Investors largely looked past Wednesday's violent clash between pro- Trump protesters and focused on better-than-expected nonmanufacturing reports, with the Institute for Supply Management services index rising staging an unexpected rebound in its index to 57.2 in December, from 55.9. On top of that, weekly jobless claims were nearly steady last week, slipping to 787,000 from a revised 790,000 the prior week. In corporate news, Tesla Inc. finished at a record high helping to make CEO Elon Musk the richest man in the world, surpassing Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos. Investors will be closely watching Friday's jobs report for clues on the health of the economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic.