Thursday’s only scheduled release was a quiet one. Initial jobless claims for the week ended 17 October came in at 194,000, below the 200,000 forecast. The prior week was revised to 200,000 from the 199,000 first reported, so the drop from the revised base was 6,000. The four-week average eased to 197,750. Continuing claims, which lag by a week, stood at 1.728 million, and the insured unemployment rate held at 1.1%.

The labor market is still not shedding workers. Claims near 200,000 are low by historical standards, and a print below forecast says layoffs are not building. That supports consumer spending, but it also gives the Federal Reserve no labor-market reason to cut when it meets on 27 and 28 October. Markets have largely priced out a rate hike, and a hold is the expected outcome.

Equities barely registered the data. The session belonged to earnings, and the earnings story was about guidance and spending rather than headline beats. Meta, IBM, Texas Instruments and Tesla all beat expectations, yet mixed guidance and heavier spending plans set the tone. Meta’s higher capital spending revived questions about the return on AI investment. Lam Research fell after weaker guidance. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropped more than 6%, and the technology sector lost about 3.3%.

The index moves followed that split. The Nasdaq Composite fell 2.60% to 26,008, a loss of 694 points. The S&P 500 slid 1.21% to 7,663. The Dow was flat, up 0.02% to 52,866, because its price-weighted mix leans less on chipmakers. The Russell 2000 outperformed the large-cap indexes.

The bond market moved more than the data justified. The 10-year Treasury yield closed at 4.96% on the Treasury’s par curve, down from 5.13% the day before, a fall of about 17 basis points. It slipped below 5% for the first time since late September. A claims beat of 6,000 does not explain that. Investors selling stocks and buying Treasuries is the more plausible driver, and lower yields helped rate-sensitive groups such as homebuilders and real estate trusts.

Oil pointed the other way. West Texas Intermediate settled at $99.47, up 2.39% to a five-month high, and Brent rose about 4% to $113.17 on Middle East tensions. Fuel costs feed straight into the inflation prints that the Fed is weighing.

Friday brings the S&P Global flash PMIs for manufacturing and services. They will show whether business activity is holding up against energy costs, and whether Thursday’s chip selling spills into the real economy.

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