Investors are finding some appetite for risk after a jittery week.

Stocks edged higher Thursday, with all the major indexes rising in the single digits.

Investors encouraged by better-than-expected results from Alcoa put money into stocks they recently avoided: commodities producers, banks and industrial companies.

The aluminum producer said it lost $454 million during the second quarter, but that was below Wall Street’s expectations.

Money also moved into more economically sensitive industries such as technology and energy, which stand to gain more if a recovery takes hold. And it came out of defensive shares such as consumer staples and health-care stocks — a positive sign for a market that has been losing hope for a quick recovery.

The gains were tempered by weak sales reports from retailers and evidence that the labor market is still hurting.

The Labor Department said the number of initial jobless-benefits claims fell last week to 565,000, the lowest level since early January and better than what analysts were expecting.

However, some of the improvement was due to changes in the timing of auto industry layoffs and the holiday-shortened week, and the number of continuing claims unexpectedly jumped to a new high.

U.S. retailers did little to help the bull case for the economy, reporting generally weaker monthly sales, with apparel sellers taking some of the biggest hits.

Analysts expect the market will make little headway until investors have a clearer picture from companies of where the economy is headed. Second-quarter earnings reports are just starting and will begin to come out in earnest next week.

“I don’t see anything breathing yet,” Steven Stahler, president of The Stahler Group in Baton Rouge, La., said about the economy. “We can drift sideways for a long time. There are so many loose ends and so many unknowns.”

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 4.76, or 0.1 percent, to 8,183.17, the second day of modest gains after a 161-point drop Tuesday. The blue chips crossed zero 108 times during trading.

The broader Standard&Poor’s 500 index rose 3.12, or 0.4 percent, to 882.68, while the Nasdaq composite index gained 5.38, or 0.3 percent, to 1,752.55.

Bond prices fell, sending their yields lower. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, a widely used benchmark for mortgages and other loans, rose to 3.41 percent from 3.31 percent late Thursday.