Tech outperformed on Thursday as investors looked for a safe place to hide in a choppy session, says Terence Gabriel.

He's the stocks buzz analyst at Thompson Reuters.

Lots been built in Esso.

It does seem to be a moment where certainly what have been the winners.

Some of these value stocks, financials, energy, small caps they're stumbling where the market is rotating a bit back into some of those sort of bigger cap growth stocks that it feels maybe a sort of safer area to concentrate on when you have suddenly uncertainty creeping back in here.

Mixed economic news put a cap on any upside moves.

Outside of tech, 900,000 new Americans signed up for jobless benefits last week, so that number was down slightly.

Week to week is still way above the peak during the financial crisis.

The elevated numbers raised the risk the US could post a second straight month of net job losses.

All in all, some 16 million Americans received some sort of government unemployment assistance during the first week of January.

But on the bright side, permits for future home building projects surged last month to a 14 year high, and manufacturing activity in the mid Atlantic region accelerated this month thanks to a boom in new orders.

Investors also had to contend with mixed earnings.

Shares of United Airlines tumbled nearly 6% after posting its fourth straight quarterly loss.

Intel, the humbled chip giant, topped both sales and profit forecast.

It also guided current quarter estimates higher.