US markets closed higher for third straight session

The US market closed higher on Wednesday, for a third session in a row following dovish comments from Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen, helping the Dow Jones Industrial Average set a record for the most up days in a month in six years. Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President John Williams stated that the US economy remains on track for a gradual path of interest rate hikes and fears over the impact of a slowing global economy and bouts of financial volatility are overdone. Williams added that despite recent financial market volatility, the overall outlook for both the US and the global economy remains largely unchanged over the past few months. He expects the US economy to expand at a bit above 2 percent this year, pushing the unemployment rate down to around 4.5 percent by the end of 2016. Williams doesn’t expect negative US interest rates in the foreseeable future, while also adding that the Fed has studied such a policy carefully.

On the economy front, the private sector added 200,000 jobs in March, ADP reported, a modest deceleration from the prior month’s revised 205,000. The increase in March was roughly in line with expectations. The small private-sector businesses added 86,000 jobs in March, medium businesses added 75,000 and large businesses added 39,000. Most of those gains were in the service sector - 191,000 jobs added there, compared with 9,000 for goods producers. Manufacturing gained 3,000 jobs in March.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 83.55 points or 0.47 percent to 17,716.66, Nasdaq gained 22.67 points or 0.47 percent to 4,869.29 while, S&P 500 was up 8.94 points or 0.44 percent to 2,063.95.

The Indian ADRs closed in green; HDFC Bank was up 1.70%, Dr. Reddy’s Lab was up 1.05%, Infosys was up by 0.47%, Tata Motors was up by 0.36% and ICICI Bank was up by 0.26%.