U.S. stocks traded higher midway through trading, with the Dow Jones index gaining more than 200 points on Thursday.

The Dow traded up 0.40% to 51,801.63 while the NASDAQ surged 2.08% to 24,952.56.

The S&P 500 also rose, gaining, 0.89% to 7,381.26.

Leading and Lagging Sectors Information technology shares jumped by 4.4% on Thursday.

In trading on Thursday, communication services stocks fell by 3.2%.