Stocks advance after two-day plunge

NEW YORK – Wall Street steadied itself Thursday after two sessions of steep declines, rebounding moderately as oil prices stepped back from their frenetic upward run.

Oil set another trading record overnight – moving to more than $135 per barrel for the first time – then pulled back below $131, offering some relief for stock investors. Meanwhile, the Labor Department said the number of workers seeking unemployment benefits declined by 9,000 last week to 365,000. The market expected a slight increase.

But the economic fallout from ascendant energy prices remained Wall Street’s focus.

“People are concerned about the economy and what’s happening with oil,” said Scott Fullman, director of derivatives investment strategy for WJB Capital Group in New York, referring to the advance in stocks.

Fullman predicted the markets will remain jittery, and said the low trading volumes Thursday indicate the gains are coming without much conviction.

The modest rise in stocks followed a decline in the Dow Jones industrial average that totaled about 427 points, or 3.3 percent, over the course of Tuesday and Wednesday. It was the steepest two-day loss since late February. Stocks have declined in three of the past four sessions.

The Dow rose 24.43, or 0.19 percent, to 12,625.62.

Broader stock indicators also moved higher. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 3.64, or 0.26 percent, to 1,394.35, and the Nasdaq composite index rose 16.31, or 0.67 percent, to 2,464.58.

Even with the declines of more than 2 percent in the major indexes this week, stocks are still well off their mid-March lows. The Dow is 7.5 percent above its close of 11,740.15 on March 10, when investors were preoccupied with worries over the soundness of the credit markets. Since then, Wall Street has shuffled its list of concerns, placing greater emphasis on the well-being of the overall economy, not just the troubled financial sector.

The dollar was mixed, while gold fell. Overseas, Japan’s Nikkei stock average rose 0.37 percent. Britain’s FTSE 100 fell 0.27 percent, Germany’s DAX index rose 0.42 percent, and France’s CAC-40 advanced 0.02 percent.