Wall Street experienced a rare shutdown on Monday and Tuesday owing to Hurricane Sandy’s deluge crippling parts of the Eastern US seaboard. Trading resumed on Wednesday with an initial rise, but stocks settled near the unchanged mark by the end of day on near-normal volume. Positive consumer confidence, worker productivity, and manufacturing reports sent stocks soaring on Thursday, as investors received encouraging economic news on multiple fronts. On Friday, the previous day’s gains were eventually lost despite a dramatic rise in job growth in October. The national unemployment rate, however, ticked up by a tenth of a percent to 7.9%, possibly indicating that more people have restarted their search for employment.
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