U.S. stocks extended a multiday rally to end higher Thursday, with the S&P 500 and Dow notching consecutive days of gains, as technology stocks rebounded from their recent slump. Optimism pinned to signs of easing trade tensions partly helped to buttress the market's advance. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.57% rose 147 points, or 0.6%, at 26,145 , the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.53% added 0.5% at 2,904, while the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +0.75% finished higher, up 0.8% at 8,014, after retreating on Wednesday as shares of chip makers, as measured by the iShares PHLX Semiconductor ETF SOXX, +1.14% slumped. The popular chip-maker ETF rose 1.1% on Thursday, led by gains of 4.5% in Micron Technology Inc. MU, +4.50% after the fund finished Wednesday down 1.2%. On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin invited top Beijing officials for further trade talks, marking a potential softening of testy negotiations between the world's largest economies, with investors fearing that an escalation could hurt global economies. Meanwhile, efforts to stem a currency crisis in Turkey's lira USDTRY, +0.6939% also helped to alleviate some fears of a contagion effect from emerging economies on the rest of the globe. Turkey's central bank raised its repo rates by 6.25 percentage points, which is expecting to help stem a downturn in the lira against the dollar. The European Central Bank and the Bank of England also convened policy-setting gatherings but didn't make any notable changes. In economic news, the consumer-price index rose by 0.2% in August, its fifth straight increase. Economists polled by MarketWatch had predicted a 0.3% gain. Separately, jobless claims fell slightly in the latest week, coming in at a 49-year low. Market participants were keeping one eye on Hurricane Florence, a Category 2 storm, which is headed toward the Carolinas and Virginia, and is expected to cause damage to that East Coast region despite being downgraded in recent days.
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