U.S. equity futures were trading higher Thursday morning after the Federal Reserve said it would speed up its pullback of economic stimulus.
There was a gain of 0.6% when trading begins on Wall Street, according to the major futures indexes.
The Fed said it would raise interest rates three times next year to deal with rising inflation, and it will shrink its monthly bond purchases twice the pace it previously announced, in line with ending them altogether in March.
The major US stock indexes gained a lot of momentum toward the end of the day. The S&P 500 rose by 1.6% to 4,709. It ended up with 85, almost recouping all of its losses for the week and just below the record high it set last Friday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose by 1.1% to 35,927. 43 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite gained 2.2% to 15,565. Another very busy morning for economic data coming up.
The Labor Department has had a record number of new claims for unemployment benefits last week. Expectations are for 200,000, up 16,000 from the previous week's tally of 184,000, which was the lowest in 52 years. The total number of unemployed workers who are not working on benefits is expected to fall by 56,000 to 1.936 million, which would be a pandemic low.
In November, the Commerce Department was expected to say that the number of new homes under construction increased by 3.2% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.568 million. That fell by 0.7% in October due to labor and materials shortages.
The Philadelphia Federal Reserve is going to release its index of manufacturing activity for eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and Delaware. It is expected to fall 9 points this month to 30.0. There is a chance that more manufacturers are saying business conditions are improving.
Industrial production data will be published by the Federal Reserve in November. Factory output is expected to increase by 0.7% for the month.
In Asia, the Nikkei 225 index rose 2.1%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng gained 0.2%, and China's Shanghai Composite index added 0.8%.
Retailers and other companies that rely on consumer spending have recovered from an early slide. After the Commerce Department said sales rose by a modest 0.3% in November, the sector fell short of analysts' forecasts due to rising costs, which could crimp consumer spending.
U.S. crude oil climbed 80 cents to $71.66 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It gained 14 cents to $70.87 per barrel on Wednesday.