Nasdaq up pre-holiday; Dow, S&P 500 flat

NEW YORK — Seasonal stock market trends are again overcoming geopolitical fears on Wall Street as traders push stock prices mostly higher as they often do in the days leading up to and following Thanksgiving.

On the strength of the Nasdaq composite, U.S. stocks ended mostly in the black, after shares in Europe rebounded sharply after diving a day earlier on geopolitical fears. The Nasdaq gained 0.3%, while the Dow Jones industrial average, up fractionally, and the S&P 500, down fractionally, basically treaded water.

Despite ongoing angst over the elevated terrorism threat around the globe and fresh uncertainty over the potential fallout following Tuesday's downing of a Russian fighter jet by Turkey, Wall Street investors for the most part  are shrugging off those risks and instead focusing on some decent economic data in the U.S., and the hopes for more stimulus from the European Central Bank next week.

Wall Street appears to be following historical trends on two fronts. History has shown that terrorism and other geopolitical risks only impact markets for a short period of time, with markets quickly pivoting back to more traditional drivers, such as the health of the economy, corporate earnings and other measurable economic trend.

In addition, the Thanksgiving week has been bullish for stocks, history has shown. The S&P 500, for example, has gained an average of 0.63%, on average, in the holiday-shortened week over the past 50 years, which is better than the 0.14% gain in all weeks over the past five decades. Stocks have also been up 82% of the time on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving in the past 50 years, and were higher 70% of the time on the Friday after Thanksgiving, according to data from Schaeffer's Investment Research.

Middle-class optimism buoys consumer sentiment

On the economic front, durable goods orders in October rose a much better-than-expected 3%, weekly jobless claims fell more than forecast, and personal spending inched up just 0.1%, coming up just short of the consensus estimate.

Stocks rebounded sharply in Europe after a tough session on Tuesday. The broad Stoxx Europe 600 was up 1.4%, and the German DAX ended 2.2% higher and the CAC 40 in Paris climbed 1.5%.

Adam Shell on Twitter: @adamshell.