Wall St. at record highs, Dow tops 19,000 for first time

raders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, NY,

By Yashaswini Swamynathan

(Reuters) – The three main U.S. stock indexes hit records highs for the second straight day on Tuesday, with the Dow topping 19,000 points and the S&P 500 moving past 2,200 points for the first time ever as the Donald Trump-fueled rally continued.

The small cap Russell 2000. RUT index hit an intraday high for the fourth day in a row. The index, along with the Dow, Nasdaq and S&P, closed at record highs on Monday, the first such instance since December 1999.

Trump’s pro-growth policies, including promises of tax cuts, higher spending on infrastructure and simpler regulations in the banking and healthcare industries, have led a rally, especially in those sectors, since the election on Nov. 8.

The consumer discretionary sector’s 0.74 percent increase on Tuesday led the gainers among the 11 major S&P sectors, boosted by strong quarterly reports from Dollar Tree and Signet Jewelers.

The healthcare sector was the only laggard, dropping 0.74 percent, weighed down by Medtronic.

The Dow took 121 days, or about five months, to move to 18,000 points from 17,000 points, but has since crawled along. The index took another 483 days, or roughly two years to breach 19,000 points.

“In itself the numbers don’t mean much, but from a psychological or milestone standpoint it’s a good achievement for the market,” Adam Sarhan, chief executive of 50 Park Investments, said of the record-high levels of the indexes.

“Strength begets strength. The more we can continue to rally, the more people who are on the sidelines want to jump in especially because there’s so much cash on the sidelines. The market going up is the single best advertisement for the market.”

At 10:07 a.m. ET the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 45.47 points, or 0.24 percent, at 19,002.16, easing after hitting an all-time high of 19,014.73.

The S&P 500 SPX was up 4.2 points, or 0.19 percent, at 2,202.38. It hit a high of 2,203.56.

The Nasdaq Composite was up 19.69 points, or 0.37 percent, at 5,388.55, after touching a high of 5,392.26.

Dollar Tree surged 9.5 percent to $89.91 after the biggest U.S. dollar-store chain reported a better-than-expected quarterly profit.

Signet was up 7.5 percent at $95.49 after the jeweler reported a much better-than-expected quarterly profit and raised its profit forecast.

Medtronic tumbled 7.5 percent to $74.5 after the medical device maker reported quarterly revenue that missed expectations and cut its full-year adjusted earnings forecast.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by 2,019 to 740. On the Nasdaq, 1,554 issues rose and 930 fell.

The S&P 500 index showed 44 new 52-week highs and four new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 160 new highs and eight new lows.

(Reporting by Yashaswini Swamynathan and Tanya Agrawal in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva and Savio D’Souza)

Yellen says Fed could raise interest rates ‘relatively soon’

U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen speaks at "The Elusive 'Great' Recovery: Causes and Implications for Future Business Cycle Dynamics" conference hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.,

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve could raise U.S. interest rates “relatively soon” if economic data keeps pointing to an improving labor market and rising inflation, Fed Chair Janet Yellen said on Thursday in a clear hint the U.S. central bank could hike next month.

Yellen said Fed policymakers at their meeting earlier in November judged that the case for a rate hike had strengthened.

“Such an increase could well become appropriate relatively soon,” Yellen said in prepared remarks that were her first public comments since the United States elected Republican Donald Trump to be the country’s next president.

Yellen, who was to deliver the remarks to Congress’s Joint Economic Committee at 10 a.m. ET on Thursday, said the economy appeared on track to grow moderately, which would help bring about full employment and push inflation toward the Fed’s 2 percent target.

Lawmakers on the committee, which includes members of both the House and Senate, will have an opportunity to question Yellen after she speaks.

The Fed chair gave a generally upbeat assessment of an economy that continues to generate jobs at a pace adequate to absorb new employees and keep others engaged in work. Wage growth “has stepped up,” Yellen said. Consumer spending, critical as the major component of U.S. gross domestic product, “continued to post moderate gains,” and help economic growth rebound from a weak first half. She said she expects firming in global growth, for months now considered a primary risk given weakness in Europe and China.

Indeed the major question mark for the Fed may now be the actions of the president-elect. His cabinet and policies are still taking shape. But the proposals outlined in his campaign could change the Fed’s baseline outlook substantially if he follows through on plans to cut taxes, roll out hundreds of billions of dollars in new infrastructure spending, and rip up free trade agreements.

Yellen did not mention the election in her prepared remarks. Other Fed officials in recent days have said a major change in fiscal policy could force them to shift gears if, for example, inflation begins to accelerate. But they also said they need to wait and see what the new administration proposes and what gets approved by the Republican-controlled Congress.

As it stands, Yellen said the current federal funds rate of between 0.25 and 0.5 percent is boosting economic activity, and that the country has “a bit more room to run” before inflation becomes much of a concern.

Right now, she said, “the risk of falling behind the curve in the near future appears limited,” and warrants only a gradual increase in the federal funds rate.

But that could shift, particularly as the new administration takes shape.

“The appropriate path for the federal funds rate will change in response to changes to the outlook,” Yellen said.

(Reporting by Jason Lange and Howard Schneider; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Patients plagued by high, unexpected bills from emergency room visits

A patient waits in the hallway for a room to open up in the emergency room at Ben Taub General Hospital in Houston, Texas,

By Gene Emery

(Reuters Health) – – Two Yale economists are calling for states to end a practice that allows some doctors to surprise patients with large medical bills after visits to a hospital emergency room.

The bills appear when people show up for treatment at a hospital that’s in the patient’s insurance network but the hospital has hired doctors who are independent contractors who choose not to be part of that network.

The result: unexpected bills that average $622, according to a new analysis in the New England Journal of Medicine by Zack Cooper and Finoa Scott Morton.

They found one person who was billed an extra $19,603 after going to an emergency room where the extra costs were added in and not covered by insurance.

Even a $622 bill is daunting when nearly half of Americans can’t cover a $400 expense without borrowing money or selling assets, according to data from the Federal Reserve.

Patients “are not thinking of the bill when they need to get care and they get walloped later with a bill from a physician they didn’t know, couldn’t choose and couldn’t avoid,” Cooper told Reuters Health in a telephone interview.

“It’s roughly analogous to going out to dinner, having a decent meal, paying the bill, and eight weeks later getting a $10,000 bill from the guy who served the bread. And they threaten to send us to collection if we don’t pay,” he said.

“It isn’t just emergency care,” Cooper said. “This happens for a whole lot of other things – anesthesiologists, assistant surgeons, radiologists and laboratories. This is a vagary of how we pay for health care. But the emergency room example is particularly egregious.”

In response, the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) released a statement in which its president, Dr. Rebecca Parker, complained that “the study does not discuss that insurance companies are misleading patients by selling so-called ‘affordable’ policies that cover very little until large deductibles are met – then blaming physicians for charges.”

Dr. Parker also challenged the $19,603 bill and noted that Cooper and Morton didn’t identify the insurance company supplying the data.

The two economists suggest that “the best solution would be for states to require hospitals to sell a bundled ED (emergency department) care package that includes both facility and professional fees.”

Dr. Jim Augustine, an ACEP expert on out-of-network issues, said billing used to be a package deal until the federal government demanded separate billing in the 1970s and 1980s. What has changed, he told Reuters Health by phone, is that the insurance companies have decreased what they will pay for and set up narrow networks of providers.

“Insurance companies would like to have bundled reimbursement setups because it’s advantageous for their contracting,” he said. “It’s not advantageous for the people who provide care for them.”

Cooper and Morton said if physician costs were bundled with the cost of each emergency room visit, hospitals would determine what physicians would be paid and that agreement would be part of the emergency room package. There would be no surprise bills for consumers and it would preserve marketplace competition because if a doctor doesn’t like what a hospital is willing to pay for treating patients, the doctor could work at a different hospital. Hospitals would compete by offering the best rates to attract good doctors.

Under such a system, they said, “Most crucially, patients would always be protected.”

In their study, Cooper and Morton found that 22 percent of visits involved patients going to an in-network hospital emergency room staffed by out-of-network doctors.

The odds of that happening varied regionally. It was seen in 89 percent of visits in McAllen, Texas, but virtually no visits in Boulder, Colorado.

“The fact that we see places where this just doesn’t happen really tells us that this doesn’t really need to happen,” said Cooper, an assistant professor of health and economics at Yale. “There’s a lot of things that are broken in healthcare that we can’t fix or (are) really challenging. This is one that’s really big, that harms a lot of people, and that’s really easy to solve.”

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2fXw6fT The New England Journal of Medicine, online November 16, 2016.

U.S. panel says China firms be banned from buying U.S. companies

U.S. (L) and Chinese national flags flutter on a light post at the Tiananmen Square ahead of a welcoming ceremony for U.S. President Barack Obama, in Beijing,

WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Reuters) – A U.S. congressional commission charged with monitoring security and trade links between the United States and China has recommended that CFIUS, the body that vets acquisitions from foreign firms, be required to block purchases from Chinese state-owned companies.

In its annual report to the U.S. Congress, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said on Wednesday the Chinese Communist Party has used state-owned enterprises (SOEs) as the primary economic tool to advance and achieve its national security objectives.

“The Commission recommends Congress amend the statute authorizing the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to bar Chinese state-owned enterprises from acquiring or otherwise gaining effective control of U.S. companies,” the report said.

The suggestion, one of 20 recommendations made to Congress, comes just a week after the election of Donald Trump, who has repeatedly blasted China’s trade policies while on the presidential campaign trail and proposed slapping a 45 percent import tariff on Chinese goods. Trump’s transition team is currently formulating policies and choosing personnel to fill key economic and security positions.

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, created in 2000, is mandated to monitor, investigate and report to Congress on the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship between the United States and China.

The United States was the most targeted nation by Chinese acquirers this year, with mainland buyers launching a record $64.5 billion worth of deals, according to Thomson Reuters data.

The push into the United States is part of a global overseas buying spree by Chinese companies that this year has seen a record $200 billion worth of deals, nearly double last year’s tally.

The U.S.-China commission did not make any reference to CFIUS, the U.S Treasury-led Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, in its 2015 report.

CFIUS has shown a higher degree of activism against Chinese acquirers this year, catching some Chinese by surprise. Prominent deals that fell victim to CFIUS include Tsinghua Holdings’ $3.8 billion investment in Western Digital.

Overall, data do not demonstrate CFIUS has been a significant obstacle for Chinese investment in the United States. In 2014, the latest year for which data is available, China topped the list of foreign countries in CFIUS review with 24 deals reviewed out of more than 100 scrutinized by CFIUS. Although the number of Chinese transactions reviewed rose in absolute terms, it fell as a share of overall Chinese acquisitions, the reported noted, and the vast majority of deals reviewed by CFIUS were cleared.

But the report added that both private and public Chinese entities present significant risks to U.S. economic and national security, as the degree of state ownership does not necessarily reflect a business’ strategic importance.

(Reporting by David Lawder and Tony Munroe; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Dow hits record high as financial stocks rise

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S.,

By Tanya Agrawal

(Reuters) – The Dow Jones Industrial average opened at a record high on Monday, driven by financial stocks, after the index capped off its best week since 2011 following Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in the U.S. presidential election.

Since Trump’s triumph last Tuesday, investors have been betting on his campaign promises to simplify regulation in the health and financial sectors and boost spending on infrastructure.

The financial index rose 2.18 percent to its highest level since 2008. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan provided the biggest boost to both the S&P 500 and the Dow.

The Nasdaq Composite was little changed, weighed down by tech giants Apple, Facebook and Microsoft.

Stock markets around the world were affected by a continued selloff in the global bond market as investors looked for more clarity regarding Trump’s policies.

The risk of faster domestic inflation and wider budget deficits if Trump goes on a spending binge sent yields on U.S. Treasury and other benchmark global bonds higher. The dollar index surged to an 11-month high.

Yields on the U.S. 10-year Treasury notes climbed to their highest since January on Monday at 2.30 percent, while 30-year paper shot above 3 percent.

“The bond market could subject the Trump rally to a halt,” said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at First Standard Financial in New York.

“The prospect of higher inflation due to higher fiscal spending under the Trump administration has caused bonds to sell off and while higher inflation is good for the U.S. economy in the long run, it is seen as a negative factor in the short term because this market is used to near zero interest rates.”

At 9:45 a.m. EDT the Dow Jones industrial average was up 44.14 points, or 0.23 percent, at 18,891.8.

The S&P 500 was up 2.23 points, or 0.1 percent, at 2,166.68.

The Nasdaq Composite was down 0.67 points, or 0.01 percent, at 5,236.44.

Six of the 11 major S&P sectors were lower, with the utilities index’s 0.93 percent fall leading the decliners.

A host of U.S. Federal Reserve officials are scheduled to make appearances on Monday, including Dallas Fed President Rob Kaplan, Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker and San Francisco Fed President John Williams.

The central bank is widely expected to raise interest rates at its December meeting, with traders pricing in an 81 percent chance, according to CME Group’s FedWatch tool.

Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer said on Friday economic growth prospects appear strong enough for a gradual hike in interest rates.

Oil prices were at around three-month lows as the prospect of another year of oversupply and weak prices overshadowed chances that OPEC would reach a deal to cut output. [O/R]

Harman International rose 25.5 percent to $109.99 after Samsung Electronics announced an $8 billion deal to buy the company.

Mentor Graphics surged as much as 18.9 percent to a record high of $36.50 after Siemens agreed to buy the company in a $4.5 billion deal.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by 1,503 to 1,281. On the Nasdaq, 1,654 issues rose and 822 fell.

The S&P 500 index showed 65 new 52-week highs and two new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 291 new highs and 10 new lows.

(Reporting by Tanya Agrawal; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

Venezuela floods shops with unaffordable goods ahead of Christmas

Venezuela's people looking for affordable groceries

By Fabian Cambero

CARACAS (Reuters) – Topping off a year of economic crisis that left many Venezuelans hungry, the country’s socialist government is flooding shops with products ahead of Christmas, at prices that most cannot afford.

Thousands of containers of festive food and toys are on their way, say authorities, and while supermarket shelves appear fuller, prices are ludicrously high for people earning just tens of dollars a month at the black market exchange rate.

“If you’ve got money, then of course you’re happy,” said Geronimo Perez, selling newspapers in the center of Caracas. “But if not, you’re left empty-handed.”

A 1.8-kilogram (4 lbs) carton of powdered milk costs the equivalent of $20 in Caracas at the black market exchange rate. That’s more than two weeks’ work at Venezuela’s minimum wage.

The country is undergoing major economic and social problems, as a decade and a half of currency controls, price controls and now low oil prices have left the government and businesses without sufficient hard currency to import goods.

This means supermarkets are empty of basics from rice to chicken, let alone Christmas gifts.

“AT LEAST THE CHILDREN”

Queues at supermarkets that stock regulated goods can run into hundreds or thousands, many of whom are left disappointed.

President Nicolas Maduro blames the problems on an “economic war” waged against the country and his government has promised that supply will be “sufficient” in December.

The bolivar currency has weakened some 40 percent against the dollar at the black market rate in the last month alone. One dollar buys nearly 1,900 bolivars on the street, compared to just 10 bolivars at the government’s strongest official rate.

This means that importers bringing products in on the black market are paying even more and passing those costs onto consumers, fueling inflation that the IMF says will surpass 2,000 percent next year.

Anger is mounting and hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets in recent weeks hoping for change. Some though, are pleased with the festive respite.

“It’s better that at least we can celebrate a little amid all these problems, at least the children,” said Karina Mora, as she left a supermarket in the center of Caracas with her two small children.

(Writing by Girish Gupta; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Dow hits record high as markets ride on Trump win

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) the day after the U.S. presidential election in New York City,

By Yashaswini Swamynathan

(Reuters) – The Dow Jones industrial average hit a record intraday high on Thursday as investors bet that President-elect Donald Trump would lead a shift away from austerity policies.

Investors are seeing Trump’s policies such higher defense and infrastructure spending, tax cuts and deregulation of banks and as being more business-friendly than Democrat Hillary Clinton’s position of maintaining status quo.

“The markets are adjusting to a new reality and are giving Trump the benefit of doubt,” said Adam Sarhan, chief executive officer of Sarhan Capital.

“He does have some problems with immigration and with social issues, but his economic policies, at least in the short-term, are perceived to be stimulative and net good for the economy and that’s why stocks are rallying.”

The dollar jumped to a more than two-week high of 98.92, while gold turned flat as investors returned to riskier assets such as stocks.

The Mexican peso continued its downward momentum against the dollar as Trump’s policies are considered deeply negative for the country.

At 9:43 a.m. ET (1343 GMT) the Dow Jones industrial average was up 161.69 points, or 0.87 percent, at 18,751.38.

The S&P 500 was up 17.11 points, or 0.79 percent, at 2,180.37. The index is less than 20 points shy of its record intraday high.

The Nasdaq Composite index was up 45.40 points, or 0.86 percent, at 5,296.47.

Financial and healthcare stocks rose, continuing to hold their positions as the top performers among the 11 major S&P 500 sectors in the post-Trump victory rally.

Consumer staples, utilities and real-estate – the defensive parts of the market – remained the big losers.

As investors decipher what a Trump presidency would mean to the financial markets, St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard repeated his call that a single interest rate increase would be adequate for the foreseeable future.

Macy’s rose 6.4 percent to $40.85 after the department store operator raised its full-year sales forecast and announced a partnership to monetize some of its real-estate assets.

Shares of drugmakers such as Merck, Celgene and Gilead rose on Trump’s victory and after California voters turned down a ballot initiative aimed at reining in rising prices for prescription drugs.

IBM provided the biggest boost to the S&P and the Dow, rising 2.7 percent to $159.02 after Bank of America Merrill Lynch upgraded the technology services provider’s stock and raised its price target.

Walt Disney and Nordstrom are expected to report earnings after market closes.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by 1,725 to 1,049. On the Nasdaq, 1,756 issues rose and 648 fell.

The S&P 500 index showed 70 new 52-week highs and three new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 221 new highs and 14 new lows.

(Reporting by Yashaswini Swamynathan in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

Wall Street swings in post-U.S. election rollercoaster

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange

By Chuck Mikolajczak

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. stocks were little changed on Wednesday, rebounding from stunning overnight losses fueled by the U.S. election as sectors that appeared poised to benefit from a Donald Trump presidency led the charge.

After tremendous losses in the overnight session, the Dow and S&P 500 briefly turned positive shortly after the open. Strong gains in the heavily weighted healthcare sector. SPXHC, up 2.9 percent, and financials. SPSY, up 2.5 percent, kept the market within striking distance of the unchanged level.

A curb on drug pricing was one of the key campaign themes for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, while Republican President-elect Donald Trump has called for repealing the Affordable Care Act and loosening restrictions on banks enacted after the financial crisis.

“There was the potential for, maybe not all the way to price controls, but certainly more pressure on some of the pharma names and that has likely gone away,” said Peter Jankovskis, co-chief investment officer at OakBrook Investments LLC in Lisle, Illinois.

“It remains to be seen what President Trump and the Republicans will do on the healthcare side, certainly that has been a drumbeat for eight years now about the repeal of Obamacare”

The Dow Jones industrial average. DJI rose 20.78 points, or 0.11 percent, to 18,353.52, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 2.1 points, or 0.1 percent, to 2,137.46 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 12.34 points, or 0.24 percent, to 5,181.15.

Through the night, financial markets reacted violently to poll results and as Clinton’s path to victory narrowed. The S&P slid 5 percent and hit a limit down, meaning the contract could not trade lower, only sideways or up. Dow Industrials futures briefly fell 800 points.

Republicans also maintained their majorities in both chambers of the U.S. Congress, enabling the party to reshape Washington with two years of “unified” government.

“The reality is the President doesn’t dominate everything and we are still going to have a fairly split and divided Congress because even though the Republicans technically have control of the House and the Senate, they don’t have strong control,” said Jason Pride, director of investment strategy at Glenmede in Philadelphia.

“The lack of strong control kind of handicaps their ability to push through, or handicaps any one person, particularly the President’s ability, to push through extreme policies,” he said.

Wall Street is typically seen as preferring gridlock, or shared control of the White House and Congress, than a sweep of both chambers of Congress and the presidency.

The CBOE Volatility index futures shot nearly 40 percent higher at one point, reflecting investors’ reservations over a Trump presidency, but sharply retraced that advance after Trump’s acceptance speech. During the session the CBOE Volatility index. VIX was down 11.5 percent.

“Certainly (the trading floor) has a much different tone than what it did just several hours ago, but for now things remain very orderly and we would anticipate that tone to continue or improve as we get closer to the open,” said Ryan Larson, head of equity trading, U.S. at RBC Global Asset Management in Chicago, Illinois.

Big pharmaceutical names gained, with Pfizer PFE jumping 7.8 percent to $32.34. The iShares Nasdsaq Biotechnology ETF  climbed 7.2 percent and was on track for its biggest daily percentage gain in eight years.

(Additional reporting by Rodrigo Campos and Tanya Agrawal and Yashaswini Swamynathan; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Meredith Mazzilli)

On election day, Fed official urges U.S. fiscal investments

presidential election at Public School P.S. 56 in the Manhattan borough of New York, USA

By Jonathan Spicer

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. lawmakers should take advantage of low interest rates by making infrastructure investments and encouraging innovations that boost productivity, a Federal Reserve policymaker said on Tuesday as Americans voted in a presidential election.

Charles Evans, head of the Chicago Fed, waded into the fiscal policy debate just as polls opened. An outspoken dove at the central bank, he said his prediction of 1.75 to 2 percent future economic growth was “informed by some assessment of what policies we are likely to entertain” out of Washington.

The Fed, which is expected to raise rates before year end, has occasionally emerged as an issue in the divisive campaign between front runners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Trump, a Republican, said Fed Chair Janet Yellen was keeping rates low to boost President Barack Obama, a Democrat.

The Fed typically avoids prescribing fiscal policies, though its members have been more strident as their plans for a more aggressive policy tightening fizzled in the face of sub-par growth this year.

“Fiscal policy, if it were more stimulative and if it could be directed into more socially productive uses (like) infrastructure investments that strike me as something we need to do anyway, why not do it when interest rates are lower,” Evans said at a Council on Foreign Relations breakfast.

“That would end up probably increasing real rates too and that would help all of us out.”

Clinton has pledged to unveil a plan to rebuild U.S. infrastructure during her first 100 days, saying this would create new jobs. Trump has proposed increasing spending on the U.S. military and infrastructure but says he would reduce spending on other categories by 1 percent each year.

“There is a real risk if we focus too much on the debt,” Evans said, adding that fiscal policies “might incent certain types of investments or innovations.”

“If you’re restricting labor input so that we’re not going to get growth … it’s just simple arithmetic that’s going to be limiting to what our possibilities are,” he added.

Turning to the Fed’s 2-percent inflation mandate, Evans noted a preferred price measure is now up to 1.7 percent.

“We’re close, we’re getting there, and if I had even more confidence that we were going to get to 2 percent then I’d feel better about monetary policy normalization,” he said.

But there remain “reasons to be nervous about inflation,” including low expectations and the tendency of prices to be “inertial” after years below target, he said.

(Reporting by Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

U.S. jobless claims rise to near three-month high

Job seeker

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – – The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits rose to near a three-month high last week, but remained below a level associated with a strong labor market.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 7,000 to a seasonally adjusted 265,000 for the week ended Oct. 29, the highest level since early August, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Claims for the prior week were unrevised.

It was the 87th consecutive week that claims remained below 300,000, a threshold associated with a healthy labor market.

That is the longest stretch since 1970, when the labor market was much smaller.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast first-time applications for jobless benefits would be unchanged at 258,000 in the latest week.

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday left interest rates steady but said its monetary policy-setting committee “judges that the case for an increase in the federal funds rate has continued to strengthen.”

The U.S. central bank is widely expected to increase its overnight benchmark interest rate in December, but the decision could depend on the outcome of the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election.

The tightening of the race between Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and her Republican rival Donald Trump has rattled financial markets. The Fed raised borrowing costs last December for the first time in nearly a decade.

On Wednesday, the central bank offered a fairly upbeat assessment of the labor market, inflation and the broader economy.

A Labor Department analyst said there were no special factors influencing last week’s data and that no states had been estimated. There was a surge last week in the unadjusted claims for Kentucky, California and Missouri.

The four-week moving average of claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends as it irons out week-to-week volatility, increased 4,750 to 257,750 last week.

The report has no bearing on October’s employment report, which is scheduled for release on Friday, as it falls outside the survey period. According to a Reuters survey of economists, nonfarm payrolls likely increased 175,000 last month after rising 151,000 in September.

The unemployment rate is seen slipping one-tenth of a percentage point to 4.9 percent.

Thursday’s claims report also showed the number of people still receiving benefits after an initial week of aid declined 14,000 to 2.03 million in the week ended Oct. 22, the lowest reading since June 2000.

The four-week average of the so-called continuing claims fell 9,000 to 2.04 million. That was the lowest level since July 2000.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Paul Simao)