Aggressibe new stimulus measures from Japan's central bank helped pull stocks higher and offset a downbeat report from the US labour market.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 55.76 points, or 0.4 per cent, to close at 14606.11, rebounding from a 112-point slide on Wednesday. The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index added 6.29 points, or 0.4 per cent, to 1559.98.
The Dow's gain was the 10th session in a row that the index moved in the opposite direction as the session before. For the S&P 500 it was the 11th straight day of non-consecutive moves, the longest such streak since 1981.
"The bulls and bears are in this tug of war," said Burt White, chief investment officer at LPL Financial. "Central-bank action can overwhelm a lot of bad news. When it looks like things might break, like it's a brittle market that looks overbought, it keeps coming back to this reliance on more stimulus."