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New York - Stocks rallied Thursday as investors shrugged off a rise in jobless claims and focused on encouraging earnings from Ford and 3M.

A third straight rise in existing-home sales also buoyed the market, helping propel the Dow Jones Industrial Average above the 9,000 mark for the first time since January.

In the morning's economic news, jobless claims rose by 30,000 to 554,000, snapping a four-week streak of declines. It was slightly higher than the 522,000 economists had expected but the total number remained below 600,000, which was encouraging. And the total number of jobless fell by 88,000 to 6.2 million.

"The [claims] number rose, but it's well within the band of expectations. It's a bit of a dampener, but it's not enough to halt the upward movement in the equity markets," Peter Kenny, managing director at Knight Equity Markets, told Reuters. "The momentum is coming on earnings, which are solidly better than expected across many sectors."

And existing-home sales rose for a third straight month, climbing 0.3 percent to a seasonally-adjusted rate of 4.89 million in June. Inventories fell 0.7 percent.

This comes after the Dow snapped a seven-session winning streak Wednesday after disappointing results from Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo.