Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch. Our afternoon update on today's market action news and analysis.

Good afternoon. Today is Thursday October 24th and I'm your host Kim Khan. Our top story

so far. The labor market continues to defy the doomsayers. Weekly initial jobless claims

unexpectedly fell by 15,000 to

27,000.

Economists had expected a rise to 243,000.

For perspective, claims for first-time unemployment benefits

have been steady in a range of about 200,000 to 250,000 per week since

the middle of 2022.

Panthian macroeconomist Oliver Allen says,

The fallen initial claims takes them almost back to their level three weeks ago

before Hurricane Helene had any real impact. We were looking for a much bigger boost to

claims from Hurricane Milton which hit Florida October 9th. The peak impact of Milton ought to have landed in this report,

and the unadjusted level of claims in Florida, 10,500, was indeed roughly twice as high as the same week a year ago,

he said. But this falls well short of the

uplifts the claims following previous major hurricanes and was offset by

other factors, including a further falling claims in those states most heavily

affected by Helene, a dip in states

most likely to be affected by the Boeing strike, and also some retreat in claims in the

rest of the country. Also on the macro front, new home sales climbed to 738,000 in September.

That top the consensus expectations of 718,000 and was up from 709,000 in the month prior.

Sales of new single family homes rose 4.1% month on month

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