US markets closed higher after Trump's speech

02 Mar 2017 Evaluate

The US markets closed higher on Wednesday, as investors welcomed President Donald Trump’s conciliatory tone during his address to a joint session of Congress, despite a lack of details on his economic plans. Trump delivered his address to Congress after the market’s close Tuesday. In what many saw as a rather reserved speech, the US president said he would push for around $1 trillion in infrastructure spending, and promised ‘massive tax relief’ for the middle class and tax cuts for corporations. Otherwise, the speech was lacking in firm details about his economic plans. Stocks even rose slightly higher following the release of the Fed’s Beige Book, which pointed out that business optimism has cooled a bit since the election. The Federal Reserve’s so-called Beige Book, a collection of anecdotes about the economy gathered before the central bank makes interest-rate decisions, said businesses were generally optimistic about the near term but to a somewhat lesser degree than in the prior report. Overall, the Beige Book, which is based on information collected between January 10 and February 17, said the US economy continues to meander along. There were few of the more-upbeat sentiments that some economists had expected. The report fits with the most recent estimate from the Atlanta Fed of GDP growth below 2% in the first three months of the year. The Beige Book described growth in all 12 Fed districts as remaining in the same modest-to-moderate pace that has characterized the economy for most of the past eight years. There were some bright spots, acceleration in factory activity for instance, but most districts still said the pace of manufacturing growth was moderate.

On the economy front, a report on personal income and outlays showed that the cost of goods and services outpaced household income, with the year-over-year inflation rising to the highest level since 2012. Higher pace of inflation is another reason the Fed might be eager to go ahead with rate normalization sooner rather than later. The manufacturing index from the Institute for Supply Management rose to 57.7% in month of February, its best level in more than two years. Meanwhile, construction spending declined 1% in January.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 303.31 points or 1.46 percent to 21,115.55, Nasdaq was up 78.59 points or 1.35 percent to 5,904.03, while S&P 500 gained 32.32 points or 1.37 percent to 2,395.96.

The Indian ADRs closed mostly in green; HDFC Bank was up 1.24%, Dr. Reddy’s Lab was up 1.12%, ICICI Bank was up 0.27%, Tata Motors was up 0.25% and Infosys was up by 0.22%.

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