Stocks Stagnant Before Big Jobs Report, Ford Names New CEO

U.S. markets hugged the flat-line Thursday after the Dow’s record setting performance yesterday. Most of the early focus was on jobless claims ahead of tomorrow’s April payroll report. For the week of April 26, claims increased 14,000 to 344,000 vs. the Street estimate of 320,000. Meanwhile, Ford named COO Mark Fields to replace Alan Mulally as its CEO. T-Mobile is spiking after adding 1.3M subscribers. And MasterCard is up smartly after beating Wall Street Q1 estimates by a penny.