Who bought the dip? … Dow, S&P and Nasdaq rallied in ‘best day’ for years

Who had the cojones to ‘buy the dip’ earlier this week? … come on, be honest.

Anyone who was brave enough will be feeling pretty pleased with themselves this Thursday evening, after Wall Street benchmarks measured one of the best single-day sessions for a number of years.

The Dow closed nearly 700 points higher, adding 683 points or 1.76%, to 39,446.

At 5,319, the S&P 500 had gained 119 points or 2.3% - which made it the biggest day’s gain for the index in nearly two years.

The Nasdaq, meanwhile, bolted-on 464 points or 2.87% to 16,660.

It came as fresh jobs stats reinjected some confidence, following last Friday’s panic-inducing non-farms jobs report.

Today, the US Department of Labor reported a decrease in initial jobless claims, which fell to 233,000 for the week ending August 3, a smaller fall compared to 250,000 in the previous week, and, significantly this was better than the expected 240,000 claims.

Market watchers claimed this latest print had eased what had been growing concerns over a looming potential economic recession.

Positive earnings reports from big-cap companies like Eli Lilly, and to a lesser extent Under Armour, further fuelled the market's rally.

Bargain hunters raced to microchip-making tech firms like Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) and AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) were among those being bought up as investor confidence returned, with both stocks up around 6% to $105 and $136 respectively.

Investors also poured into big-data specialist Palantir (NYSE:PLTR) driving the stock more than 11% higher to close at $29.28.

Facebook and Instagram owner Meta (NASDAQ:META) added 4.24% to $509.63, and Elon Musk’s Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) rallied around 4% higher back towards $200 per share.