us stocks jumped on thursday roaring back from a sharp selloff on wall street that saw the sp 500 and the dow jones industrial average suffer their worst drop in three months the sp 500 rose 098 while the bluechip dow gained 30019 points or 099 boosted by disney intel and american express the techheavy nasdaq composite climbed 05 all 11 sp 500 sectors closed in the green amid the broad market rally financials and materials cyclical sectors sensitive to an economic recovery jumped 19 and 18 respectively industrials and health care also led the strong gains the market suffered steep declines in the previous session with the sp 500 and the dow posting their biggest oneday decline since october as the speculative buying frenzy in heavily shorted stocks kept investors on edge some feared that hedge funds being squeezed could be forced to reduce their equity holdings to raise cash others called it a sign of a bubble forming in the market these stocks including brickandmortar video game retailer gamestop gme and amc entertainment amc dropped sharply thursday after brokerage firms like interactive brokers and robinhood took steps to restrict transactions in the heavily shorted names the bullish backdrop for stocks is strong intact and so much bigger than gme and when the latter stops going up the former will stop going down rich ross a technical analyst at evercore isi said in a note gamestop a redhot target on the wallstreetbets reddit chat room fell 44 amid multiple trading halts cutting its massive weektodate gain to 197 amc entertainment fell 56 after soaring a whopping 300 in the previous session bed bath  beyond slid 36 the nonsense stocks continue to dominate a lot of the market conversation adam crisafulli founder of vital knowledge said in a note thursday away from the land of make believe the macro backdrop remains mostly the same and mostly positive shares of gamestop have soared more than 900 in january alone as newbie day traders keep pushing each other to pile into the shares and call options creating a massive short squeeze in the name the stock is still the most shorted name in the market with 120 of its float shares sold short according to factset trading volume exploded amid the retail buying spree in the previous session with 237 billion shares changing hands marking the heaviest trading day since at least 2007 on wednesday us equity option volumes hit a record 245 billion shares and 571 million contracts according to piper sandler this is not investing this is not planning for ones retirement with a diversified portfolio peter boockvar chief investment officer at bleakley advisory group said in a note this is not prudent analysis of stocks and these traders forget that buying a stock is buying a piece of a company but instead they are just speculating on a stock symbol in the ultimate game of hot potato shares of american airlines surged 93 after the carrier posted betterthanfeared quarterly results short covering also contributed to the gains as hedge funds and other short sellers rushed to buy shares to cut their losses american airlines is the mostshorted us airline according to factset apple turned in its largest revenue on record at 1114 billion in its fiscal firstquarter earnings report for fiscal 2021 sales for every product category rose by doubledigit percentage points shares of the tech giant however dipped 35 tesla dropped 33 after the electric car maker posted worsethanexpected earnings for the latest quarter the company also said it expects annual average delivery growth of 50 going forward on the data front gross domestic product increased at a 40 pace in the fourth quarter slightly below the 43 expectation from economists surveyed by dow jones the number of firsttime filers for unemployment benefits rose less than expected last week jobless claims totaled 847000 for the week ended jan 23 the labor department reported thursday economists polled by dow jones had expected firsttime claims to total 875000 subscribe to cnbc pro for exclusive insights and analysis and live business day programming from around the world