() - The major U.S. index futures are pointing to a higher opening on Thursday. Sentiment seems to be largely unaffected by a report released earlier in the day, which showed that jobless claims increased unexpectedly. That said, more economic data is on the deck and these data could sway the markets. Deal news and the announcement from General Motors about it proposed initial public offering could provide some encouragement to traders.

U.S. stocks opened Wednesday’s session lower amid a lack of any major catalysts and mostly remained below the unchanged line until the afternoon. Thereafter, the major averages staged a recovery and traded with moderate gains for much of the remainder of the session before giving back some ground and closing modestly higher.

The Dow Industrials ended up 9.69 points or 0.09% at 10,416 and the Nasdaq Composite closed 6.26 points or 0.28% higher at 2,216, while the S&P 500 Index added 1.62 points or 0.15% to close at 1,094.

Nineteen of the thirty Dow components closed the session higher, with Cisco Systems (CSCO), Home Depot (HD), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), JP Morgan Chase (JPM) and AT&T (T) posting notable gains. However, Exxon Mobil (XOM), Pfizer (PFE) and Chevron (CVX) lost about 1% each.

Among the sector indexes, the NYSE Arca Gold Bugs Index gained 1.71%, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index added 1.07%, the NYSE Arca Disk Drive Index advanced 1.44%, the NYSE Arca Computer Hardware Index climbed 1.17%, the S&P Retail Index moved up 1.02% and the Philadelphia Housing Sector Index rose 1.36%. On the other hand, the Philadelphia Oil Service Index and the NYSE Arca Oil Index fell 0.85% and 0.94%, respectively.

Currency, Commodity Markets

Crude oil futures are moving up $0.24 to $75.66 a barrel after receding $0.35 to $75.42 a barrel on Wednesday. The previous session’s modest decline came amid the release of the weekly oil inventory report, which showed that crude oil inventories fell by 0.8 million barrels to 354.2 million barrels in the week ended August 13th. Notwithstanding the decline, crude oil stockpiles were above the upper limit of the average range for this time of the year.

Gasoline inventories remained almost unchanged and remained above the upper limit of the average range. Meanwhile, distillate stockpiles rose by 1.1 million barrels and were above the upper boundary of the average range. Refinery capacity utilization averaged 90% over the four weeks ended August 13th compared to 88.1% in the previous week.

Gold futures are trading up $1.60 at $1,233 an ounce. In the previous session, the precious metal rose $3.10 to $1,1231.40 an ounce.

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