NEW YORK — U.S. stocks are drifting again on a quiet Thursday following two straight days where indexes barely budged.
The S&P 500 was virtually unchanged in early trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 38 points, or 0.1%, as of 9:50 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.3% lower.
A report showing a pickup in layoffs helped keep the market steady. The number of workers applying for unemployment benefits rose by more last week than economists expected, though it remains relatively low compared with history.
That could be a sign the economy can pull off a hoped-for balancing act of staying solid enough to avoid a bad recession, but not so strong that it puts upward pressure on inflation. Treasury yields erased earlier gains immediately after the report’s release, indicating expectations for it to encourage the Federal Reserve t
