U.S. initial jobless claims surged to a three-month high last week, suggesting omicron's impact on the labor market is getting bigger. Initial jobless claims rose by 55,000 to 286,000 in the week ended Jan. 15, data from the Labor Department showed on Thursday, beating expectations of all economists polled by Bloomberg.

Jeremy Grantham, a well-known investor who has been predicting market bubbles for decades, said the stock market is entering the historic crash he predicted a year ago, and even the intervention of the Federal Reserve will not prevent the eventual collapse of nearly 50%. The GMO co-founder said in a Thursday report that U.S. stocks are in their fourth "super bubble" in the last 100 centuries. He is convinced that this bubble will burst like the 1929 stock market crash, the 2000 dot-com bust and the 2008 financial crisis, bringing the broader market index back to statistical normality and possibly even further declines. That means the S&P 500 is down about 45% from Wednesday's close and 48% from its Jan. 4 peak at 2,500, he said.

Pimco may soon reconsider its view of reducing its holdings of long-dated U.S. Treasuries, which have been hit hard during the New Year's sell-off. U.S. bond yields, which have surged more than 30 basis points since early 2022, are now starting to look attractive, said Geraldine Sundstrom, a portfolio manager at Pimco in London who focuses on asset allocation strategies. "After this sell-off, coupled with the improved outlook, the market is pricing in a rate hike from the central bank closer to a fair range," Sundstrom said in an interview on Bloomberg Television on Thursday. "It's not a specific moment, it's fleeting, it's saying that bonds are definitely moving into more attractive territory."

ECB President Christine Lagarde said the ECB had "good reasons" not to respond as forcefully as the Fed to a spike in consumer prices. "Our situation is very different," Lagarde told France Inter radio on Thursday. Eurozone inflation is "clearly weaker" and the economic recovery is not as mature as in the US. "We have good reasons not to react as quickly and violently as we can imagine the Fed," Lagarde said. "But we have already started to respond, and of course we are ready to respond with monetary policy if necessary based on the data and the facts."

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved an antitrust bill targeting Apple, Meta Platforms Inc., Amazon.com and Alphabet Inc.'s Google, moving closer to full Senate consideration of the bill. The bill, sponsored by Senators Amy Klobuchar and Chuck Grassley, would prohibit companies from giving their products additional advantages on their platforms. Smaller rivals say the companies act as gatekeepers, exploiting unfair business practices to maintain their dominance. Companies involved in the bill have warned that the legislation would give foreign competitors an advantage, undermining U.S. innovation and risking user privacy and security, compromising consumer-favorite products. One of the related amendments to the antitrust law passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee addresses how data is shared with China, Chinese-controlled companies or other foreign competitors.

U.S. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown said Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell will win Senate confirmation of his re-election nomination early next month. Brown said in an interview with Bloomberg TV that he expects Sarah Bloom Raskin's nomination to be the Fed's vice chair of regulatory affairs to also be confirmed in the Senate.

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