Wall Street opens modestly lower on Thursday

• Major equity indexes open the day in a calm manner.
• Weekly Initial Jobless Claims data got largely ignored by the market participants.

Following a roller-coaster ride in the first half of the week, Wall Street's main indexes opened the day little changed on Thursday. As of writing, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 were both down 0.15% on the day while the Nasdaq Composite was virtually unchanged at 9,483 points.

US stocks' action turn subdued on Thursday

Among the 11 major S&P 500 sectors, four of them trade in the positive territory while seven of them post modest losses. The Consumer Discretionary Index is up 0.45% as the top-performer in the early trade while the Healthcare Index is losing 0.8%.

Earlier in the day, the data published by the US Department of Labor showed that 2,438,000 Americans applied for unemployment benefits during the week ending May 16th. Nevertheless, the fact that this reading came in close to the market expectation of 2.4 million didn't allow investors to show a significant reaction. Investors are now waiting for the preliminary Manufacturing PMI data from the US.