By Yasin Ebrahim

Investing.com – The S&P 500 closed higher Thursday, as lawmakers reached an agreement on a stop-gap measure to raise the debt ceiling and temporarily avert a U.S. default, prompting investors load up on stocks.  

It rose by 0.83% and gained 1% (337 points), while the Nasdaq went up 1.1%

Chuck Schumer, the U.S. Senate Majority leader, said that lawmakers have reached an agreement for the Treasury Department to increase its debt ceiling by $480billion to enable the government to pay off its obligations until December. On Thursday, at 8:00 pm ET, Senate will vote in favor of the agreement. 

“The deal takes the near term risk off the table … and allows Democrats to turn their focus to finding a compromise on the multi-trillion reconciliation package,” Aptus Capital Advisors portfolio manager David Wagner told Investing.com in an interview with on Thursday​.

Higher prices were driven by the larger move up by the Cyclical Stocks. These stocks tend to move with the economy.

After the approval of the sports betting and casino company to purchase the media company TheScore, consumer discretionary was the best performing sector.

The list of top performing consumer discretionary stocks included General Motors (NYSE) and Ford (NYSE) amid optimism regarding both companies’ plans to create electric cars.

Oil prices fell as energy stocks rose after oil prices lowered their losses. The U.S. announced that it would tap emergency oil reserves in an effort to relieve the gas price pressure.

Megacap tech, the one that prompted the wider market rebound just a few days earlier, continues to trend higher.

Other than Apple (NASDAQ) and Microsoft (NASDAQ), Amazon.com.com. (NASDAQ), and Alphabet.com. (NASDAQ), were all in the green.

Twitter (NYSE:) meanwhile jumped 4 percent after the company announced plans to sell MoPub’s mobile advertising network to AppLovin, a mobile gaming developer for $1.05billion.

On the earnings front, Levi Strauss & Co  (NYSE:) was the standout performer, rising 8.5% after its quarterly results that topped Wall Street expectations on both the top and bottom lines.

Investor optimism about the potential recovery of the labor market has been fueled by better-than-expected weekly unemployment claims data. There are just days left before the September nonfarm payrolls.

According to the labor department, 326,000 individuals applied for unemployment insurance. This is down by 38,000 from the previous week’s revised 364,000 and lower than the projections of 348,000.

Falling claims points to a rebound in the labor markets, supported by improved monthly employment data due Friday. This could give the Federal Reserve the green light for tapering of its bond purchases next month.

Economists predict that the U.S. would have created 500,000 new jobs last month. This is an improvement over the 225,000 in August.

Wagner explained that while the Fed intends to begin tapering this year, it will probably do so at $15 billion per month. But, Wagner did not say if that was yet an official policy. Markets are most at risk if the Fed is more aggressive with their QE tapering so it can end earlier in 2022.