U.S. stocks open higher as Wall Street attempts to recover from back-to-back losses

U.S. stock indexes opened higher on Thursday after booking back-to-back losses in the previous sessions as investors digested the latest commentary from the Federal Reserve on the future path for interest-rate hikes. The Nasdaq Composite
COMP,
-0.27%
rose 0.4%, and the S&P 500
SPX,
+0.12%
was up 0.3%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
+0.24%
rose 109 points, or 0.3%, to 34,870. Treasury yields continued to advance on Thursday morning, with the 10-year yield
TMUBMUSD10Y,
4.297%
up 2 basis points, at 4.29% after rising to its highest level since the 2008 financial crisis. In U.S. economic news, the number of Americans who applied for unemployment benefits last week fell by 11,000 to 239,000, underscoring the strength of the labor market and remarkably low level of layoffs taking place in the economy. New jobless claims retreated from a revised 250,000 in the prior week, the government said on Thursday. Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Federal Reserve said its gauge of regional business activity rose to 12 in August from negative 13.5 in the prior month. It was the first positive reading after 11 straight months of contraction. Any reading above zero indicates expanding activity. Shares of retail giant Walmart Inc.
WMT,
-1.19%
shed 0.1% after reporting an earnings and revenue beat in the fiscal second quarter.