US markets ended the lackluster day of trade in red terrain on Friday amid geopolitical uncertainty ahead of the first round of voting in the French presidential election on Sunday. Recent polls have suggested the race is too close to call amid questions about the impact of yesterday's terrorist attack that left one French police officer dead and two others wounded. With no candidate expected to win more than 50 percent of the vote, the top two candidates will likely head to a runoff on May 7, 2017.
Traders largely shrugged off a report from the National Association of Realtors showing that U.S. existing home sales jumped to their highest level in ten years in March. The report said existing home sales jumped 4.4 percent to an annual rate of 5.71 million in March after slumping by 3.9 percent to a downwardly revised 5.47 million February. The street had expected existing home sales to climb by 2.2 percent to a rate of 5.60 million from the 5.48 million originally reported for the previous month. With the much bigger than expected increase, existing home sales surged up to their highest level since reaching 5.79 million in February of 2007.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 30.95 points or 0.15 percent to 20,547.76, Nasdaq slipped 6.26 points or 0.11 percent to 5,910.52 and S&P 500 was down by 7.15 points or 0.30 percent to 2,348.69.
The Indian ADRs closed mostly in green; Dr. Reddy’s gained 0.39%, Tata Motors jumped 0.19%, Infosys added 0.13% and Wipro was up by 0.02%. On the other hand, HDFC Bank dropped 0.60% and ICICI Bank was down by 0.18%.
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