US Equity benchmarks ended on quiet note on Thursday with concerns about the outlook for interest rates following comments from St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard. Bullard said the relatively minor downgrades to the Fed’s economic outlook suggest the next rate hike ‘may not be far off provided that the economy evolves as expected.’ Sentiments remained down-beat with the Labor Department releasing a report showing a modest increase in initial jobless claims in the week ended March 19th. The initial jobless claims edged up to 265,000, an increase of 6,000 from the previous week’s downwardly revised level of 259,000. The street had expected jobless claims to inch up to 268,000 from the 265,000 originally reported for the previous week.
A separate report from the Commerce Department showed a pullback in durable goods orders in the month of February. The Commerce Department said durable goods orders fell by 2.8 percent in February after surging up by a revised 4.2 percent in January. The street had expected durable goods orders to drop by 3.0 percent. Excluding orders for transportation equipment, durable goods orders slid by 1.0 percent in February after climbing by 1.2 percent in January. Ex-transportation orders had been expected to dip by 0.2 percent.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 13.14 points or 0.08 percent to 17515.73 and the Nasdaq gained 4.64 points or 0.10 percent to 4773.50. On the other hand, S&P 500 climbed 21.37 points or 0.16 percent to 13,358.11.
Indian ADRs closed mixed on Thursday; Infosys rose 0.15%, Wipro increased 0.09% and Tata Motors was up by 0.07%, while HDFC Bank decreased 0.28%, Dr Reddy’s slipped 0.02% and ICICI Bank was down by 0.01%.