US market close: Stocks end mixed ahead of key employment report

US stocks closed with mixed results on Thursday 5 May, with the Nasdaq Composite posting its 10th loss in 11 sessions ahead of an employment report expected on Friday 6 May. Oil closed off session highs but managed to close more than 1% higher amid concerns of a supply shortage due to the wildfire by Canada's oil sands.

US crude oil futures surged $0.54 (£0.37;€0.47), or 1.2%, to settle at $44.32 (£30.58;€38.86) a barrel. Earlier in the session, crude traded more than 4% higher to surpass $46 (£31.74;€40.33) a barrel, CNBC reported. "At the very beginning…that was a one hundred percent correlation with the Alberta wildfires and then it kind of got looser in terms of the increase," Luana Siegfried, energy research associate at Raymond James, said.

Siegfried told CNBC that oil's decline could be attributed to profit-taking, while other traders attributed it to a Genscape report of 1.35m-barrel stockpile building at the Cushing, Oklahoma delivery hub. "Later in the day Genscape came out and said there was this big build in Cushing," John Kilduff, founding partner at Again Capital, said. "The reality is the tar sand fields are a ways from where the fire is so it's not that big a deal. The Libya thing, too, is not that big a deal," he added, referencing rising tensions in Libya.

The S&P 500 dropped less than 0.1% to settle at 2,050.63 for the third straight session. According to MarketWatch, a 0.6% decline in consumer-discretionary stocks brought down six of the index's 10 sectors. Energy, meanwhile, managed to rise 0.7% during a rally in crude oil prices.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the only index to close in positive territory, jumped nine points, or less than 0.1%, to end at 17,660.71. A 1.5% rise in share of International Business Machines Corp contributed to gains, while a 2% decline in Caterpillar Inc led losses.

Meanwhile, the Nasdaq Composite fell almost 9 points, or 0.2%, to close at 4,717.09. CNBC reported that shares of Amazon.com and Apple weighed on the tech-heavy index.

The US dollar index surged for a third-straight session, rising more than half a percent. The euro was near $1.14 and the yen at 107.26 yen against the greenback. Treasury yields hit their lowest in over a fortnight, with the 2-year yield at 0.718% and the 10-year yield at 1.735%.

Ahead of the non-farm payrolls report for April due on 6 May, the weekly jobless claims rose to 274,000, CNBC reported.

Overseas, European and Asian stocks closed mostly higher. The Shanghai Composite ended 0.2% higher while the Hang Seng dropped nearly 0.4%. Japanese markets remained closed for a holiday.