Stock futures ticked up Thursday evening, adding to earlier gains. 

The Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq ended Thursday's regular trading day higher, with each index gaining for the first time in three sessions. The S&P 500 and Dow were on track to end the week roughly flat, while the Nasdaq was poised to log another weekly decline. 

U.S. and Brent crude oil prices sank on Thursday as demand concerns increased after additional virus-related lockdowns were imposed in Europe and Asia, outweighing supply issues due to an ongoing blockage of the Suez Canal. Treasury yields steadied, and the benchmark 10-year yield hovered around 1.63%. 

The past couple weeks have been marked by choppy equity trading, especially heading into some of the final sessions of the first quarter. But overall, the cyclical energy, financials and industrials sectors – or the biggest underperformers of 2020 – have outperformed strongly for the year-to-date, while last year's leading technology companies have lagged. Signs of improving economic growth have trickled in, with Thursday's bigger-than-expected drop in new unemployment claims to a pandemic-era low among the latest positive reports.

"We have seen that value has outperformed growth when actual GDP has been above [the] long term average," Lori Calvasina, RBC Capital Markets head of equity strategy, wrote in a recent note. "In other words, growth stocks tend to outperform when growth is scarce, but value tends to outperform when it is plentiful. The good news for the value trade is that current consensus forecasts expect GDP to remain above trend through the end of 2022. The thing to monitor is whether that changes." 

A prevailing concern for many investors, however, has in fact been centered on the pace of economic expansion, and whether the stimulus-aided post-pandemic recovery might barrel forward even more vigorously than expected and stir up rapid inflation.

"It is hard to keep up with this economy," Bank of America economists wrote in a note Thursday. The firm raised its forecast for real gross domestic product growth this year to 7.0%, compared to the Federal Reserve's median forecast for a rise of 6.5% this year. "We expect a near-term burst of inflation not only reflecting base effects but also due to transient inflation bottlenecks as demand increases faster than supply for certain categories of spend." 

Still, Federal Reserve policymakers have recently tried to assuage market participants' fears over a sharp rise in inflation. Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin told Fox News on Thursday that he sees inflation returning "closer to normal next year" after a probable spike this year, which will come as a result of base effects as inflation data laps weak reports from 2020. Chicago Fed President Charles Evans said even a jump of inflation for six months "is not nearly enough" to warrant a pivot on monetary policy by the central bank. And on NPR's Morning Edition Thursday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell reaffirmed that the Fed remained strongly committed to targeting 2% average inflation over time, and said that any eventual pullback in Fed support would be done "gradually, over time, and with great transparency." 

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