June 20 (Reuters) - The S&P 500 pulled back on Thursday after reaching the crucial 5,500-point mark for the first time ever, while investors assessed recent economic data and commentary from Federal Reserve officials to gauge the timing of interest-rate cuts this year.
The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell last week, but the latest data showed the number of people on benefits rolls overall was the highest since January, a sign that the U.S. job market continues to cool.
Another set of data showed U.S. single-family homebuilding fell in May amid continued high mortgage rates.
“The news that we got today was just another negative weakness in the economy”, said Tom Martin, senior portfolio manager at Globalt in Atlanta.
“In the employment report, you're getting those (unemployment) claims that are not terrible, but it's.. getting into a territory that's not low necessarily anymore."
Energy (.SPNY), opens new tab and utilities (.SPLRCU), opens new tab were biggest gainers among the 11 S&P 500 sector indexes, up 2.01% and 0.85% respectively, while technology (.SPLRCT), opens new tab led the decline.
“There's still a lot of noise in there about supply and demand still isn't really that strong. But there's just been.. a willingness to sort of come back to that area where we're going to be needing energy going forward,” said Martin.
Meanwhile, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said it would take a year or two to get inflation back to 2%, as wage growth might still be too high, spurring worries of interest rates staying elevated for longer.
Money markets currently see a 58% chance of a 25-basis-point rate cut by the U.S. central bank in September, according to LSEG's FedWatch data.
At 02:16 p.m. the Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI), opens new tab rose 337.25 points, or 0.87%, to 39,172.11, the S&P 500 (.SPX), opens new tab lost 4.97 points, or 0.09%, to 5,482.06 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC), opens new tab lost 105.91 points, or 0.59%, to 17,756.79.
Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab dipped 2.35% after it reached an all-time high as the world's most valuable company.
Kroger (KR.N), opens new tab fell 3.65% after striking a cautious tone on near-term consumer spending, as it reaffirmed its full-year same-store sales and profit forecasts despite topping first-quarter estimates.
Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT.O), opens new tab tumbled 14.18% on potential equity dilution after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission declared effective the company's filing for a resale of certain shares and warrants, giving it about $247 million in proceeds.
Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 1.05-to-1 ratio on the NYSE. There were 216 new highs and 109 new lows on the NYSE.
On the Nasdaq, 1,894 stocks rose and 2,310 fell as declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 1.22-to-1 ratio.
Reporting by Echo Wang in New York; Additional reporting by Shubham Batra and Ankika Biswas in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila, Shounak Dasgupta, Pooja Desai and Aurora Ellis
