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"Investors will be looking ahead to Friday's employment report for the next reading on the economy. The employment number will probably be bad, perhaps another elimination of 600,000 jobs," said Frederic Dickson, chief market strategist, D.A. Davidson & Co.

Market watchers trying to get a handle on the count of unemployed got a preview of sorts in the ADP private-sector payrolls survey released Wednesday. It found companies axed 697,000 jobs in February. Read Economic Report.
"There is no firm correlation between this report and Friday's employment report, but obviously ADP has quite a large footprint in the private sector, so if they're seeing losses it can't bode well for the economy overall even if it's not [correlated one-to-one] with the employment report," said Dan Greenhaus, an analyst at Miller Tabak & Co.
"Construction lost jobs for the 25th straight month, bringing the total number of losses in that sector to over [1 million]. Manufacturing lost jobs for the 36th month in a row, while the goods-producing [category] lost jobs for the 26th month in a row," said Greenhaus.
Also ahead of Friday's Labor Department report, the employment component of the ISM non-manufacturing index for February came in for scrutiny. Read more.
"Only two industries reported increased employment this month, and surprisingly, one of those was the real estate, rental, and leasing sector," said Omair Sharif, an analyst with RBS Research.
Fourteen industries pointed to lower employment levels in February, while two reported no change -- findings "consistent with significant losses in service-sector jobs," said Sharif, who forecast another sharp drop in nonfarm payrolls in February of about 625,000, with the unemployment rate climbing from 7.6% to 7.9%.
A separate tally, also released Wednesday, found major U.S. companies laid cut 186,350 jobs in February, more than double the year-earlier figure. But the unscientific findings of job-cut announcements compiled by Challenger Gray & Christmas also found last month's reductions slowing from January's pace, when layoff announcements tracked by the outplacement firm hit a seven-year high of 241.749. See detailed report.
Following rallies overseas, U.S. stocks climbed after succumbing to five straight days of losses, with energy and materials fronting sector gains.