NEW YORK —Investors coasted Thursday, leaving stocks unchanged while they looked ahead to today for a major jobs report.
U.S. government bonds hardly moved, and neither did European stocks.
Stocks rose slightly in the morning after the Labor Department said the four-week average of unemployment claims fell to 375,750, the lowest since June 2008 and enough to suggest a steadily improving job market.
The more important numbers come today, when the government releases the number of jobs created in January and the unemployment rate. In December, the country added 200,000 jobs, and the rate was 8.5 percent.
The Dow Jones industrial average traded in a narrow range all day, between a gain of 25 points and a loss of 40. It closed down 11.05 points at 12,705.41. In the 274 trading days since the beginning of 2011, the Dow has traded in a narrower range only 25 times.
The broader Standard & Poor’s 500 rose 1.45, or 0.1 percent, to 1,325.54. The Nasdaq composite rose 11.41 points, or 0.4 percent, to 2,859.68.
“It’s a great time to be placing your bets, seeding your garden, because we’re fixing the problems,” said John Manley, chief equity strategist for Wells Fargo Advantage Funds in New York. “If you believe the U.S. economy is going to get better, you want to own stocks.”
Bond traders stayed on the sidelines too. The price of the benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose 6.2 cents for every $100 invested, and the yield inched down to 1.82 percent from 1.83 percent Wednesday.
U.S. mining stocks rose after British mining company Xstrata confirmed it is in merger discussions with commodities trader Glencore International. In the U.S., Denver’s Newmont Mining rose 1.9 percent, Alcoa was up 2.2 percent and iron ore and coal miner Cliffs Natural Resources rose 0.3 percent.
The deal is a signal to investors that mining companies are trading at low prices compared with the commodities they mine, said Nathan Rowader, director of investments at Forward Management in San Francisco.
Retailers were a patchwork of rising and falling stocks, reflecting their patchwork of January sales results. Costco and Target came in better than expected. Abercrombie & Fitch fell 13.8 percent to a one-year low after it said higher markdowns and cotton costs mean its adjusted fourth-quarter profit and revenue will be less than expected.
