US markets closed mostly up on encouraging data

The US markets closed marginally higher on Tuesday with markets picking up steam in late trading session. On the economy front, job openings at US workplaces rose to 4.46 million in April -- the most since September 2007 -- from 4.17 million in March. Compared with same period in the prior year, April job openings rose 17%, as private-sector openings increased 18% to 4.05 million, and government positions ticked up to 410,000 from 408,000. With 9.75 million unemployed people in April, there were about 2.2 potential job seekers per opening, below March’s ratio of 2.5. Small-business owners have recovered all of the optimism lost during the Great Recession. The higher level of confidence is feeding into price increases. The National Federation of Independent Business’s small-business optimism index increased again to 96.6 last month, from 95.2 in April. The May reading is the highest since September, 2007, before the last recession.

Separately, US wholesale inventories rose 1.1% in April, while wholesale sales climbed 1.3%. At April’s sales pace, the inventory-to-sales ratio was unchanged at 1.18 months. Inventories also grew 1.1% in March while sales increased 1.6% in that month. Inventories of durable goods rose 0.9% in April, while inventories of nondurables increased 1.4%.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up by 2.82 points or 0.02 percent, to 16,945.92, the Nasdaq Composite added 1.76 points or 0.04 percent, to 4,338.00 and the S&P 500 lost 0.48 points or 0.02 percent, to close at 1,950.79.

The Indian ADRs closed mixed on Tuesday; Dr. Reddy’s Lab was up by 0.62%, Infosys was up 0.35% and Wipro was up 0.02%. On the other hand, ICICI Bank was down by 0.29% and Tata Motors was down 0.26%.