By Yasin Ebrahim

Investing.com – The S&P 500 slumped Thursday as investors remained wary of making big bets on stocks even as the prospect of a government shutdown eased.  

The fell 0.3%, the fell 0.4%, or 270 points, the Nasdaq was up 0.4%.

On Thursday, the Senate voted in favor of a temporary appropriations bill that would keep government operating through December. To avoid shutdown, the bill will be put to a vote by the House.

As lawmakers continue to stall over raising the debt limit to avoid the U.S. defaulting by October 18, the drama in Capitol Hill will be renewed.

Uncertainty over Washington developments fueled sentiment and economic data showed that the third week saw a rise in jobless claims.

The week ending Sept. 25 saw jobless claims rise by 11,000 to 356,000, exceeding economists’ predictions of a decline to 333,000.

The worst performers were Cyclical stocks, which are those that move in conjunction with the economy. They traded in red as energy, financial and industrials all trade in the red. 

Energy, which is set to end the month positive, was also dragged lower by falling oil prices following data on Wednesday showing an increase in US stocks as production normalized. 

Commerzbank (DE) stated that US crude oil production increased by an additional 500,000 barrels per week to 11.1 million barrels/day. This can be interpreted as normalization following hurricane-related outages. 

The backdrop of continuing political drama has caused investor sentiment to continue to be tested and this has had a negative impact on the wider market. This led tech’s intraday gains to drop some.

Apple (NASDAQ:), Microsoft (NASDAQ:), Amazon.com (NASDAQ:), Facebook (NASDAQ:) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:) the so-called  Fab 5, which make up for about 25% of the S&P 500, were mixed.

While Treasury yields are experiencing a slowdown, the 10-year yield remained at 1.5%.

CarMax (NYSE) reported quarterly results which were below the bottom line. This sent its shares down more than 10%.