Home building, jobs reports push Dow higher

Better-than-expected reports on home building and jobs pushed two of the three major stock indexes higher Thursday. The pace of new home construction quickened last month and the number of people who applied for unemployment benefits fell last week to 414,000, more of an improvement than economists expected. Weekly applications for unemployment have been more than 400,000 since April, a rate that suggests job growth is still slow. Worries that Greece's debt troubles could spread continued to weigh on financial markets. The dollar and U.S. government bonds rose as traders moved money into safer investments. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 64.25 points, or 0.5 percent, to close at 11,961.52. It's now slightly up for the week. The S&P 500 rose 2.22, or 0.2 percent, to 1,267.64. The Nasdaq composite lost 7.76, or 0.3 percent, to 2,623.70. The two are less than 1 percent lower this week. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.92 percent, the lowest since November, from 2.97 percent late Wednesday. Bond yields fall when prices rise. A survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that manufacturing slowed in that region, one day after a similar report found that manufacturing was slowing in the New York area. A series of weaker economic indicators over the past two months have led some analysts to trim their expectations for the year. Investors are now starting to expect negative economic news, said Uri Landesdman, president of Platinum Partners, an investment manager in New York. That dulls the impact of each downward sign, he said.

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