us stocks rose thursday afternoon after swinging between gains and losses earlier in the session as fourthquarter gross domestic product came in slightly stronger than expected boosting investor confidence that the economy could find a soft landing in 2023 the dow jones industrial average finished wednesdays session up 10 points after falling roughly 400 points at the session all three averages were higher for the week with the techheavy nasdaq on track for its fourth straight weekly advance which would be its longest such streak since august us stock indexes were trading higher thursday afternoon reversing earlier losses after a flurry of economic data including a report on fourthquarter us gross domestic product gdp came in stronger than economists expected the economy grew at a robust 29 annual pace to close out 2022 according to the bureau of economic analysis the gdp report an official scorecard for the economy expanded at an abovenormal rate for the second quarter in a row it also increased by 32 in the third quarter following a pair of negative readings in the first half of 2022 thursdays gdp report suggests that the economy is relatively strong even in the face of aggressive measures by the federal reserve to calm inflation said carol schleif chief investment officer at bmo family office in emailed commentary markets cheered the latest data as evidence that the us economy might achieve a soft landing rather than slumping into a recession hopes also have been building that lower inflation readings could result in less aggressive interestrate hikes by the federal reserve but some strategists also worry economic data might not yet show the full effects of the restrictive policy the economy continues to act like a forward moving ocean liner but i do see the gdp report as kind of looking in the rearview mirror the fed hikes started about a year ago they rate hikes take a year to 18 months to really take effect so i think by the middle of the year we will see a market slowdown and i would suspect a good chance of negative gdp by midyear said chris grisanti chief equity strategist at mai capital management in nyc see alsous economy doesnt look as good as gdp suggests others also pointed to signs of weakness in the details of the data economists from jefferies pointed out in a note to clients that the growth in domestic demand was just 08 less than the prior quarter after removing the contribution from trade and inventories bottom line despite the acceleration in top line growth in the second half demand is actually cooling under the surface said jefferies economists aneta markowska and thomas simons in a thursday note while investors heralded it as the latest sign that the us economy is holding up well despite the feds aggressive interestrate hikes grisanti suspects the economic slowdown will happen faster than investors are pricing in the current situation is like a horror movie with two monsters monster no 1 one is the federal reserves rate hikes grisanti told marketwatch via phone the second monster is the economic slowdown he said we think the economy will slow relatively quickly as winter moves into spring seethis recession indicator is close to the point of no return but stocks historically rally if the fed cuts and the economy still grows investors were also focused on the latest batch of corporate earnings released late wednesday and before the bell on thursday which helped to brighten the outlook following disappointing results and guidance from microsoft corp msft earlier in the week tesla inc tsla shares jumped thursday as investors applauded an earnings beat and cheerful comments from chief executive elon musk the electriccar maker delivered what it said were record sales and profit for the fourth quarter though those numbers were not completely up to wall streets expectations the company also said it was on track to deliver about 18 million vehicles this year seetesla stock soars as analysts say latest results may quiet the bears for now more corporate earnings are expected on thursday after the closing bell with results due out from mcdonalds mcd intel intc visa v dow dow and northrop grumman noc  in aggregate companies were reporting earnings 24 above expectations according to data from refinitiv earnings typically outperform wall streets generally conservative forecasts however and the outperformance seen so far this earnings season has been smaller than the longterm historical average in other economic data the labor market also has been showing signs of strength despite more reports of layoffs in the technology finance and media sectors as the number of americans filing for unemployment benefits fell to their lowest level since april data from the commerce department showed us new home sales rose for the third month in december climbing 23 to a seasonallyadjusted rate of 616000 from a revised 602000 in the prior month