Market Recap: Thursday, May 21

All three major indices closed in the red after Thursday’s trading session, falling due to the recent update from the U.S. Labor Department on initial unemployment claims and rising tensions in U.S.-China relations. The Final Round panel discusses the latest.

Video transcript

[SOUND SURGE]

MYLES UDLAND: All right. Welcome back to the Final Round here on Yahoo Finance. Ab-- about 40 seconds to go in today's trading session, markets sliding a bit as we head towards today's bell. The NASDAQ right now off about 9/10 of 1%.

All three majors lower on today's session, but we still have the small caps, the Russell 2000, up-- up about 3/10 of 1%, again, as we head towards the bell here on this Thursday. We're going to have a long weekend here in the US. We'll see if there's any volatility during tomorrow's session as things square up ahead of a three-day trading break.

[BELL CLANGS]

[GAVEL STRIKES THREE TIMES]

All right. Those are live pictures from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Again, we are now just one full trading day away from there being a few more people down there on the floor, certainly not a-- a full staff on the floor come Tuesday. But we will see a-- a number of folks return to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

The company announcing that last week, a slight-- maybe a small sign perhaps things normalizing a bit. At least here in-- in New York City, I think, it'll make us feel a little bit better. Like, things are making some kind of progress as we move towards a phased reopening, whatever you want to call it, phase 1, 2, 3. Everyone trying to figure out what summer and beyond may look like for them.

Again, let's take a quick look at this market right now because the NASDAQ, again, finished down 0.97%, 97 basis point loss there on the NASDAQ. The S&P 500 just under 2,950. Of course, you'll remember during yesterday's program, we talked with Jared Blikre about whether today would be the day the S&P would get back to 3,000. I guess we could give it another go tomorrow. We'll see if we have a couple percentage point rally in us.

But the market right now-- and Jared broke it down in the last half hour-- some folks think the S&P moving to 3,200 wouldn't necessarily change the longer-term picture. Obviously, we have a lot of concerns with the virus and the economy and the labor market and so on, corporate profits, to work through here. So the market, though it has made a huge rally off of those lows, very, very uncertain future ahead of everything we're looking at here in the US. I want to bring in my co-host Jen Rogers now for a bit more on today's market action. Jen.

JEN ROGERS: Hey, there, Myles. So I think you're right, just talking about this return to normalcy, just pointing that out there, when we saw the bell, right, that we're going to have some more people down there. Again, as we reported yesterday, all 50 states have some level of reopening. I think another story that has reminded me and people on the street and people that work in finance that business is going about is the possible merger-- this talk going on between Uber and Grub, that that's going on as well.