Stocks Edge Higher

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The U.S. plan to help buy as much as $40 billion in assets from banks got started almost four months after it was proposed and without Pacific Investment Management, the world's biggest bond manager and an early supporter. The Treasury Department picked nine money managers yesterday for the Public-Private Investment Program, or PPIP, including BlackRock and Invesco. Pimco, which in March announced plans to apply, said it withdrew its application in June because of "uncertainties" about the plan's design. The government's plan is a scaled-down version of a program that was once envisioned to buy as much as $1 trillion in devalued real-estate loans and mortgage-backed assets.

In economic news Thursday, U.S. wholesale sales were up 0.2% in May, while inventories were down 0.8%. April's 0.4% dip in sales was revised up to unchanged, the 1.4% drop in inventories was also revised up slightly to -1.3%. Petroleum sales were up 4.6%, while sales excluding petroleum were down 0.3%. The inventory-sales ratio declined to 1.29 from 1.31.

"The data are a little better than expected, but there shouldn't be much reaction in the markets," says Action Economics.

U.S. jobless claims plunged 52,000 to 565,000 in the week ended July 4, from a revised 617,000 the week before (from 614,000). It's the first time the weekly figure was below 600,000 since Jan. 24. Continuing claims rose 159,000 to a fresh record high of 6,883,000 from a revised 6,724,000 (from 6,702,000).

S&P chief economist David Wyss believes the report "is distorted by the holiday weekend, and probably reflects seasonal adjustment anomalies rather than any sudden improvement in the labor market."

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