(News Bulletin 247) – After a difficult start, Wall Street ended with strong gains on Thursday, having favored a positive reading of the battery of indicators of the day: the Dow Jones climbed nearly 1.3% to 34,408 points and the Nasdaq Composite, more than 1.1% to 13,783 points.

Among the many US data in the session, US retail sales rose 0.3% in May from the previous month, but industrial production fell 0.2% over the same period.

Moreover, if the ‘Empire State’ index rose to +6.6 in June, thus returning above the zero bar separating contraction and expansion of local manufacturing activity, the ‘Philly Fed’ index is, on the contrary, in negative territory, at -13.7.

But the participants seemed determined to look at the positive side of this contrasting news, which led them to favor technology stocks, like Meta (+3.1%), Alphabet or Apple (+1.1%). .

Within this sector, Microsoft was also well oriented (+3.2%) thanks to positive comments from analysts, who saw the software giant benefit from the emergence of generative artificial intelligence.

Also in stock news, Target gained 3.5% as the low-cost food retailer announced it would raise its quarterly dividend by nearly 2% to $1.10 a share.

Finally, Lennar rose 4.8% after the homebuilder published lower results for its second quarter, but accompanied by an increase in its delivery forecast for the year.

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