The US markets closed higher on Friday, after an abrupt late-day reversal, though the advance was not enough to push the Dow Jones industrial average into positive territory for the week. The markets initially traded in negative territory on mixed economic reports. The volatile apartment construction led a surge last month in new-home building, a trend that worried some economists about the health and sustainability of recent housing-market trends. Overall construction starts on US homes rose 13.2% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.07 million, the fastest pace in five months. That jump was led by apartments, as starts for single-family homes only nudged higher. The preliminary May reading of the University of Michigan and Thomson Reuters consumer sentiment index fell to a reading of 81.8, down from 84.1 in April. The decline was unexpected.
Meanwhile, benchmark treasury prices snapped a three-day win streak after data showed a rebound in housing construction, but ended the week higher amid speculation about central bank policies, economic growth, and technical positioning in the market. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard stated that the US economy is within sight of the Federal Reserve’s inflation and employment goals, and is expected to grow at a robust pace for the rest of the year. The Fed is much closer to its policy goals than it has been in the past five years. Bullard enlightened that the impact of the Federal Open Market Committee’s taper this year has been tame compared with the taper tantrum last summer.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up by 44.50 points or 0.27 percent, to 16,491.31, the Nasdaq Composite added 21.30 points or 0.52 percent, to 4,090.59 and the S&P 500 gained 7.01 points or 0.37 percent, to close at 1,877.86.
The Indian ADRs closed on mixed note on Friday; ICICI Bank was up by 4.64%, HDFC Bank was up 2.66% and Tata Motors was up 1.07%. On the other hand, Infosys was down 0.56% and Wipro was down by 0.14%.
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