US Market Commentary (After Market Close): Stocks Rise Sharply Ahead of Key Jobs Report

Broad-based buying on the back of a strong quarterly report from Cisco and a couple of pleasing economic reports helped stocks net robust gains ahead of tomorrow's potentially pivotal nonfarm payrolls report.

Cisco (CSCO 23.93, +0.64) won support for itself and other large-cap tech issues by posting better-than-expected top and bottom line results for its latest quarter and announcing that it has authorized an additional $10 billion to add to its share repurchase plan, which now stands at roughly $13 billion. Cisco went one step further and issued a solid outlook during its conference call.

Strength among large-cap tech issues helped hand the Nasdaq to its best single-session percentage advance since July. Meanwhile, all 30 Dow components advanced and helped the blue chip index close above 10,000 for the first time in two weeks.

The positive tone among this session's participants was also helped by news that third quarter nonfarm productivity surged 9.5% in its preliminary report. That is considerably better than the 6.5% increase that had been widely expected. The surge marked the largest gain in productivity since 2003. It was fueled by the sharp increase in third quarter output and the considerable drop in hours worked. With job conditions still weak, unit labor costs dropped 5.2% in the third quarter. They were expected to fall 4.2%.

The latest initial jobless claims total came in 512,000, down 20,000 from the previous week and not as bad as the 522,000 initial claims that had been widely expected. Continuing claims came in at 5.75 million, which is in stride with what had been forecast and down from 5.82 million in the previous week. That decline, though, is primarily rooted in the trend that unemployed workers are losing their benefits, not finding jobs.

That trend has many market watchers looking ahead to the government's official nonfarm jobs report, which will be released before the opening bell Friday morning. The consensus forecast is that the October unemployment will hit 9.9%, which would be the highest level since 1982.

Despite concerns for that matter, all 10 major sectors finished the session with a gain. Only consumer staples failed to gain more than 1%. Disappointment over pharmacy benefit management business at CVS Caremark (CVS 28.87, -7.28) overshadowed the company's better-than-expected earnings and additional share repurchase authorization, and caused the stock to drag on the consumer staples sector. Consumer staples, as a group, settled with a relatively modest gain of 0.6%.

Insurers also lagged as participants shunned Allstate (ALL 29.05, -0.57) and Prudential Financial (PRU 44.64, -1.92). Allstate missed the consensus earnings estimate, but Prudential actually posted a positive earnings surprise. Despite their weakness, financials still advanced 2.5%.

Only the consumer discretionary sector had a better gain. It advanced 2.6% in the face of mixed monthly same-store sales results from retailers.