Stocks Up on Mixed Job Data

There was good news and bad news on the job front today. Good news: Initial claims for unemployment dropped more than expected last week. Bad news: They’re still near a 26-year high, and FedEx announced that it’s cutting salaries by 5%. But the good outweighed the bad for investors this morning, who sent the Dow creeping up 23 points at the open, while the Nasdaq and S&P rose 0.3% and 0.1%.

“I think we’re in a market phase here of ‘wait and see,’” said one economist. “We’ve got the holidays going on, and that’s a major distraction always, and we have a market with still no clarity about the outlook.” (More stock market stories.)