Morning Brief 08/12/2023

U.S stocks ended higher as investors looked again to labor market data for signposts to the path of interest rates. The latest weekly jobless claims data revealed 220,000 claims were filed in the week ending Dec 2, in line with what economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected and was up just 2,000 from the week prior, largely reflecting limited increases in layoffs. Alphabet shares ended 5.3% higher as Wall Street cheered the launch of Gemini - the new artificial intelligence model could help narrow the gap in a race with Microsoft.