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

Good afternoon, today is Thursday, July 24th, and I'm your host, Kim Khan. Our top stories so far.

Sticking with our summer movie theme, just like Jason Voorhees, the job market just keeps coming back when everyone declares it dead.

Initial jobless claims this week posted another unexpected drop, falling to their lowest level since April.

Claims declined by 4,000 to 217,000 from 221,000 in the prior week, and lower than the 227,000

consensus.

That's the fourth week in a row the number of people filing for unemployment benefits

either unexpectedly declined or was weaker than consensus.

And it indicates that the labor market isn't deteriorating much,

giving the Federal Reserve the ability to keep rates on hold as it assesses the effects of tariffs on inflation.

Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, says,

this is a frozen labor market. The good news is layoffs are not picking up. New unemployment claims ticked down last week and are staying at a low level this summer, but it is also

not easy to find a job right now outside of health care, education, and law enforcement. The four-week

average of $224,500 was a decrease of $5,000 from the prior week's average of 229-500.

Continuing claims increased to 1.955 million from 1.951 million, lower than the 1.96 million forecast.

Pantheon macroeconomist Oliver Allen argues that auto shutdowns distort the picture, and the labor

market is likely still loosening,

but he adds, admittedly underlying claims also seem to have dipped lately, at least compared to the

recent peak in early June. For investors, the fallen claims is good news. Society General

recently indicated that claims above 250,000 would put the risk rally across many asset classes

in jeopardy, as claims around

$300,000 are usually a precursor of a recession. Among active stocks, American Airlines is slumping

...