US STOCKS-Wall Street closes up on tech rally despite mixed signs on economic rebound

* Indexes gain: Dow 0.20%, S&P 0.30%, Nasdaq 0.37%
* Weekly jobless claims unexpectedly rise to 870,000
* U.S. new-home sales vault to near 14-year high
* Nikola slides after Wedbush downgrade
* Accenture drops on quarterly earnings

(Adds closing prices, comment)
By Herbert Lash
Sept 24 (Reuters) - Wall Street rallied in a rocky session
on Thursday as beaten-down technology shares gained favor after
data showing a surge in the sale of new homes revived faith in
the economic recovery even as U.S. jobless claims rose
unexpectedly.
Stocks also reacted positively to news of efforts to enact
further stimulus in Washington, helping lift the S&P to a
session high, although the index then turned negative before
retracing some gains.
Apple Inc AAPL.O , Amazon.com Inc AMZN.O , Nvidia Corp
NVDA.O and Facebook Inc .FB.O , stocks that have outperformed
at a time of increased economic uncertainty, all rose.
The wild session indicated caution was in store, said Dennis
Dick, a trader at Bright Trading LLC, who warned market
sentiment that drove momentum has sharply changed.
"Fear of missing out has turned into to fear of losing
actual money," Dick said. "This is a shakeout of all the
Robinhood traders, a shakeout of retail investors. They're
getting punished, and rightfully so, because you can't just buy
stocks out of a hat thinking stocks only go up."
Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives are working
on a $2.2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package that could be
voted on next week, a key lawmaker said, as House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi reiterated she is ready to negotiate with the White
House. Wall Street started the day lower after the jobless claims
data. The S&P 500 briefly fell 10% below the intraday record
peak it hit Sept. 2 for the second time in recent days.
Dow constituents, considered a barometer of economic
confidence, lagged the S&P 500 as data showed 870,000 Americans
applied for jobless benefits in the week ended Sept. 19, up from
866,000 in the previous week. Homebuilders .SPHOME rose 0.73% after the Commerce
Department reported that sales of new single-family homes rose
to their highest level in nearly 14 years in August. That report
followed data this week showing sales of previously owned homes
also near a 14-year high.
Phil Orlando, chief equity strategist at Federated Hermes,
said notwithstanding spats of poor data, the U.S. economy is on
a path to a powerful V-shaped recovery as seen in auto sales,
the housing market and overall consumer spending.
"All of the inventory rebuilding is starting, all of the
things you want to see are happening," Orlando said. "Now, are
there some chinks in the armor? Yes, just saw it in the claims
numbers this morning."
The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI closed up 52.31
points, or 0.20%, to 26,815.44. The S&P 500 .SPX gained 9.67
points, or 0.30%, to 3,246.59, and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC
added 39.28 points, or 0.37%, to 10,672.27.
Volume on U.S. exchanges was 10.43 billion shares, up from
10.04 billion shares on Wednesday.
The CBOE volatility index .VIX , known as Wall Street's
fear gauge and which is hovering near two-week highs, is
expected to climb in the run-up to the quarter-end next week.
"The key is the VIX index, which has not yet reached levels
that would suggest a continued strong move to the downside,"
said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Spartan Capital
Securities in New York. "So you might get a day of bargain
hunting followed by a day of selling, but as the last days of
September come into place, we should begin to see some sort of
window dressing by institutions."
Nikola Corp NKLA.O , which is set for its biggest weekly
decline ever, slid 9.69% as Wedbush downgraded the stock to
"underperform." Accenture Plc ACN.N fell 7.04% after the IT consulting
firm forecast current-quarter revenue below expectations, while
U.S.-listed shares of BlackBerry Ltd BB.N initially jumped
after the Canadian security software firm posted a surprise rise
in quarterly revenue, but finished the day lower. Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a
1.08-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.36-to-1 ratio favored decliners.
The S&P 500 posted no new 52-week highs and two new lows;
the Nasdaq Composite recorded 12 new highs and 129 new lows.