Wall Street's indexes climbed on Thursday, with the Nasdaq erasing losses for 2020, following a clutch of upbeat earnings reports led by PayPal as investors looked past more weak jobs data caused by the coronavirus-induced economic downturn.

Energy, materials and financials, which have lagged this year, led the way among S&P 500 sectors, while consumer staples lagged the most.

Shares of PayPal Holdings soared 14% and boosted the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq after the company said it expects a strong recovery in payments volumes in the second quarter as social distancing drives more people to shop online.

Shares of media company ViacomCBS Inc and ride-hailing firm Lyft also jumped after their earnings, as a first-quarter reporting season that Refinitiv estimates will show a 12% decline in earnings begins to wind down. ViacomCBS shares rose 10.3% and Lyft shares climbed 21.7%.

Stocks have rebounded sharply since late March from the coronavirus-fueled sell-off, helped by massive monetary and fiscal stimulus. Investors are now watching efforts by a number of states to spark their economies by easing restrictions put in place to fight the outbreak.

“Everything is going smoothly so far and I think there’s an assumption on the market’s part that that’s a good sign," said Brad McMillan, chief investment officer for Commonwealth Financial Network. "The market is looking at this and saying so far, so good.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 211.25 points, or 0.89%, to 23,875.89, the S&P 500 gained 32.77 points, or 1.15%, to 2,881.19 and the Nasdaq Composite added 125.27 points, or 1.41%, to 8,979.66.

The Nasdaq turned marginally positive for 2020 by closing above 8972.604, after being down well over 20% for the year as of late March. The S&P 500 remains down over 10% this year.

Data showed millions more Americans sought unemployment benefits last week, suggesting layoffs broadened from consumer-facing industries to other segments of the economy and could remain elevated even as many parts of the country start to reopen.

The U.S. employment report for April is due on Friday.

“The market rightly or wrongly is just much more focused on what that data looks like two months from now, not what that data looks like right now,” said Eric Freedman, chief investment officer at U.S. Bank Wealth Management.

Investors were also encouraged by news that China's exports unexpectedly rose in April for the first time this year as factories raced to make up for lost sales due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The development of treatments for the coronavirus has been watched closely by Wall Street as key for resuming economic activity. Moderna Inc shares rose 8.7% after the company sped up plans for its experimental COVID-19 vaccine and said it expected to start a late-stage trial in early summer.

Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 2.96-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 2.33-to-1 ratio favored advancers.

The S&P 500 posted nine new 52-week highs and no new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 56 new highs and 8 new lows.

About 10.4 billion shares changed hands in U.S. exchanges, below the 11.7 billion daily average over the last 20 sessions.

GLOBAL STOCKS

World shares rose after Chinese exports proved far stronger than expected, suggesting a recovery was under way, but the dollar fell from two-week highs as another report showed millions of more Americans were unemployed.Gold jumped 2% as the weak U.S. economic data heightened fears over a coronovirus-induced global downturn.

Stocks globally were bolstered by Beijing reporting a 3.5% rise in exports in April from a year earlier, confounding expectations of a 15.1% fall and outweighing a 14.2% drop in imports.

The unexpected strong showing boosted speculation China could recover from its coronavirus lockdown quicker than expected and support global growth in the process.

MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe gained 1.02%.

"It's clear that this virus has gone from east to west and we are now seeing that in the data," said Societe Generale's Kit Juckes, pointing to the China numbers and relatively better purchasing managing data in countries such as Australia.

But with the full economic impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic still to be seen and huge amounts of debt potentially pushing up borrowing costs, "the market is hugely split between die-hard bears and buy-on-dip buyers," he added.

Markets traded cautiously overnight with renewed Sino-U.S. tensions lurking in the background.

U.S. President Donald Trump said he would be able to report in about a week or two whether China is meeting its obligations under a trade deal, as Washington weighed punitive action against Beijing over its handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

The flow of economic data remained grim, with the Bank of England warning that the coronavirus crisis could cause the country's biggest economic slump in 300 years.

"Despite their dizzying rally, we continue to be cautious on equities in the near term," Luca Paolini, chief strategist at asset manager Pictet said. "Markets seem to be overestimating the speed of economic recovery."

WORLD'S BIGGEST BORROWER

Bond markets saw one of the largest shifts in a while after the U.S. Treasury said it would borrow $2.999 trillion during the June quarter, five times more than the previous single-quarter record.

It will sell $96 billion next week alone and a surprising amount of that will be at longer tenors, which in turn pushed up long-term yields and steepened the curve.

The 30-year bond last rose 78/32 in price to yield 1.3214%, from 1.413%.

The early rise in Italy's yields to over 2% reflected worries caused by a German court ruling this week targeting the European Central Bank's bond purchase program.

The U.S. dollar fell from two-week highs as investors booked profits on the currency's gains this week before Friday's U.S. nonfarm payrolls report for April, which could show massive job losses amid a COVID-19 pandemic that has ravaged the global economy. The dollar index fell 0.291%, with the euro up 0.28% to $1.0824. The euro was hurt by a gloomy economic outlook from the European Commission.

In commodity markets, gold had eased on expectations that supplies will grow as bullion refineries resume operations but turned higher. U.S. gold futures settled 2.2% higher at $1,725.80.

Oil prices fell after being up more than 6% during Thursday trading as global demand worries offset bullish news that Saudi Arabia increased its official crude selling price and a surprise rise in Chinese exports last month.

U.S. crude settled 44 cents lower at $23.55 per barrel and Brent was at down 26 cents at $29.46.