Extending their previous session rally, the US markets closed higher for the second straight day on Friday as investors looked ahead to a crucial meeting of Federal Reserve policy makers, which scheduled for next week. Also, traders are likely to keep an eye on key reports on retail sales, industrial production, consumer prices, and housing starts, which could impact the Fed's decision. Meanwhile, the Labor Department released a report showing that producer prices came in flat in August, as a drop in energy prices was offset by a continued increase in service prices. The producer price index for final demand was unchanged in August after rising by 0.2 percent in July. Excluding food and energy prices, the core producer price index rose by 0.3 percent in August, matching the increase seen in the previous month. Core prices had been expected to tick up by 0.1 percent. At the same time, the University of Michigan also released a report showing a sharp drop in consumer sentiment in early September. The report said the consumer sentiment index tumbled to 85.7 in September from the final August reading of 91.9.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 102.69 points or 0.63 percent to 16,433.09, the Nasdaq was up by 26.09 points or 0.54 percent to 4,822.34 while, the S&P 500 gained by 8.76 points or 0.53 percent to 1,961.05.
The Indian ADRs ended mostly in red on Friday, HDFC Bank was down 0.57%, Tata Motors was down 0.29% and ICICI Bank was down 0.07%. On the other hand, Dr. Reddy’s Lab was up 0.47% and Infosys was down by 0.09%.