The US markets closed mostly lower on Thursday, tracking sinking oil prices. Investors were reluctant to place any big bets ahead of Friday’s jobs report. On the economy front, initial claims for unemployment benefits fell by 16,000 last week to a nearly three-month low of 254,000, showing no evidence of rising layoffs ahead of the key US jobs report for June. Applications for unemployment benefits are the lowest since claims touched a post-recession bottom of 248,000 in mid-April. The average of new jobless claims over the past month slid 2,500 to 264,750. Continuing jobless claims fell by 44,000 to 2.12 million in the week ended June 25. Private-sector employment picked up a bit in June, suggesting the weak May nonfarm-payroll report may be an anomaly. Automatic Data Processing reported that 172,000 private-sector jobs were added in June. ADP also revised May’s gain to 168,000 from the original estimate of 173,000. The pickup in private-sector employment in June suggests that last month’s very weak number was an outlier.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down by 22.74 points or 0.13 percent to 17,895.88, S&P 500 lost 1.83 points or 0.09 percent to 2,097.90, while Nasdaq added 17.65 points or 0.36 percent to 4,876.81.
The Indian ADRs closed mostly in green; HDFC Bank was up 0.62%, Dr. Reddy’s Lab was up 0.54%, Tata Motors was up 0.38% and Infosys was up 0.04%. On the other hand, and Wipro was down 0.06%.