Stocks rose on Thursday as market participants continued to bet that the worst of the banking industry crisis is behind them. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose over 140 points, while the S&P 500 Index and Nasdaq Composite added about 0.6% and 0.7%, respectively.
Here's how the market settled on Thursday:
S&P 500 Index (NYSE: SPY): +0.57% or +23.02 points to 4,050.83
Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSE: DIA): +0.43% or +141.43 points to 32,859.03
Nasdaq Composite Index (NASDAQ: QQQ): +0.73% or +87.24 points to 12,013.47
Checking in with the banking sector, President Joe Biden called for a range of regulations on the industry in effort to safeguard the U.S. banking system following the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.
The Biden administration's proposals for mid-sized banks include: raising liquidity requirements, increasing the frequency of stress tests, requiring banks to submit emergency plans to regulators for how they would close in the event that they fail, limiting which banks must contribute to replenishing the Deposit Insurance Fund, and updating stress tests to account for novel situations not included in current models, like high-speed digital withdrawals and social media spreading information at a much faster pace than ever before.
Blackstone (NYSE: BX) CEO Steve Schwarzman told Bloomberg News in an interview Thursday that broad use of social media partly contributed to the recent banking crisis.
"This crisis was caused by people on iPhones and other devices, hearing on social media that some bank might be in trouble," said Schwarzman. "They responded with huge withdrawals in a very short period of time, collapsing the bank."
Elsewhere, chipmakers continued to rally on Thursday, with the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ: SMH) reaching its highest level in nearly a year as gains from ASML (NASDAQ: ASML), Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD) and On Semiconductor (NASDAQ: ON) drove the fund higher.
Bed Bath & Beyond (NASDAQ: BBBY) was in the spotlight after the retailer warned it may need to file for bankruptcy protections in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing Thursday. The company said its lenders downsized its loan from $565 million to $300 million.
In economic news, initial unemployment filings rose to 198,000 for the week ended March 25, up 7,000 from the previous week's total and slightly above expectations of 196,000. Investors were encouraged that this is another sign that they labor market is cooling.
The Nasdaq is set to post its best quarter since 2020 as Wall Street looks to end an eventful month and first quarter on Friday. The tech-heavy average is currently up nearly 16% year-to-date. The S&P 500 is also expected to close out the quarter in the green, with the broader market index up roughly 6% for the year.
Depending on Friday's performance, the Dow may or may not end the first-quarter positively, as the index is down about 0.8% year-to-date.