The US markets declined on Wednesday with major indices giving back early gains on release of minutes from the most recent Federal Reserve meeting and Nasdaq snapped its eight-day winning streak. The minutes of Federal Reserve’s January policy meeting showed most Fed members are determined to taper the central bank's bond-buying program despite this winter's troubling economic data. At its Jan 28-29 policy meeting, the Fed voted to trim its monthly asset purchasing program to $65 billion from $75 billion. All members agreed that the cumulative improvement in labor market conditions and the likelihood of continuing improvement indicated that it would be appropriate to make a further measured reduction in the pace of its asset purchases at this meeting. However, the minutes revealed that monetary authorities debated ditching plans to hike rates if the unemployment rate falls past 6.5%, a policy tool known as forward guidance.
In economic news, the Commerce Department said that housing starts sank 16 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 880,000 units. The number of building permits issued last month declined by 5.4% to a seasonally adjusted 937,000 units. A separate report revealed that the US producer price index rose 0.2% last month, beating forecasts for a 0.1% gain, while core producer prices were also up 0.2%.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average declined by 89.84 points, or 0.56 percent, to 16,040.56, the Nasdaq ended lower by 34.83 points or 0.65 percent, to 4,272.78 and the S&P 500 was down by 11.99 points or 0.2 percent, to 1,828.75.
The Indian ADRs closed mostly in red on Wednesday, HDFC Bank was down by 0.25%, ICICI Bank was down by 0.60%, Tata Motors was down by 0.03% and Dr Reddy’s was down by 0.35%.
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