ABC News Today

• US stocks closed higher on Thursday as investors digested new economic data and comments from the Fed’s James Bullard.
• Jobless claims fell by 2,000 to 250,000 last week, while existing home sales fell for a sixth straight month.
• Meanwhile, Fed Chairman James Bullard favors a rate hike of 75 basis points in September to combat inflation.

US stocks were mixed for most of Thursday’s session before closing higher as investors digested several economic data points and fresh comments from Fed Chairman James Bullard.

Existing home sales fell for a sixth straight month in July, hitting a two-year low, as the housing market continues to cool due to rising mortgage rates. Existing home sales fell at an annual rate of 4.81 million in July, the National Association of Realtors said.

Weekly jobless claims fell between 2,000 and 250,000 last week, well below estimates of 260,000. The data highlights that the increase in layoffs and hiring freezes at select technology companies have not yet affected the overall labor market.

The data reinforces the Federal Reserve’s view that it still has work to do to cool the strong labor market, increasing the likelihood of an outsized interest rate hike at the end of September. At least, that’s what Bullard thinks, as he told The Wall Street Journal that a rate hike of 75 basis points in September would be appropriate.

Here’s where the US indices stood at the close at 4:00 pm ET on Thursday:

“We should continue to move quickly to a level of the kind of policy that puts significant downward pressure on inflation … I really don’t see why you want to extend interest rate hikes into next year,” he said. said Bullard.

European natural gas prices continue to rise and are now 10 times higher than usual for this time of year, Bloomberg data show. Dutch TTF natural gas futures, the European benchmark price, were near 234 euros per megawatt hour on Thursday, up around 3.5% intraday.

Europe is ramping up diesel imports from sources around the world as an energy crisis grips the continent, forcing industries to burn the petroleum product instead of increasingly expensive natural gas.

Bed Bath & Beyond plunged as much as 18.2% in premarket Thursday after a major shareholder moved to sell its stake in the meme stock. Ryan Cohen’s RC Ventures intends to dump the 9.45 million shares it owns, according to an SEC filing.

A college student reportedly managed to rack up a $110 million profit on his $25 million stake in Bed Bath & Beyond after its surge in recent weeks. Jake Freeman, 20, cashed in on his share before today’s big drop. It was also revealed that the university student and his uncle had amassed a stake in pharmaceutical company Mind Medicine, sending shares higher during Thursday’s session.

West Texas Intermediate crude oil rose 2.38% to $90.21 a barrel. Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, rose 3.15% to $96.60.

Bitcoin fell 0.27% to $23,380. Ether prices rose 1.50% to $1,875.

Gold fell 0.20% to $1,773.10 an ounce. The 10-year Treasury yield fell 3 basis points to 2.87%.