US stocks closed higher for the fourth straight day as investors ignored the IMF’s lowered growth forecasts for global economies.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average increased 75.65 (0.50 per cent) to 15,300.34.

The broad-based S&P 500 added 11.86 (0.72 per cent) to 1,652.32, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index rose 19.43 (0.56 per cent) to 3,504.26.

The International Monetary Fund trimmed its world economic growth expectations for 2013 to 3.1 per cent from the April forecast of 3.3 per cent.

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Analysts said investors were cheered by slightly better-than-expected earnings from Dow component Alcoa, which kicked off the earnings season yesterday, and were increasingly comfortable with the prospect that the Federal Reserve will soon begin tapering its stimulus program.

“People have started to realise in the last week that even though the Fed may be tapering, the only way it is going to happen is if there is economic improvement,” said Michael James, managing director of equity trading and Wedbush Morgan Securities.

Blue chips scored solid gains: Bank of America was up 1.9 per cent and Morgan Stanley added 2.3 per cent; Caterpillar gained 2.6 per cent). Networking giant Cisco gained 2.2 per cent.

Package delivery firm FedEx rose 4.4 per cent amid speculation that Bill Ackman, head of hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, had put his sights on the company.

Apple rose 1.8 per cent after a US court dismissed a lawsuit with Amazon over use of the “app store” name after Apple decided to stop pursuing the case. Amazon increased 0.3 per cent.

IBM shed 1.9 per cent after Goldman Sachs cut its rating to “neutral” from “buy”, citing pressures on IBM’s growth markets and higher-margin revenue streams, according to Dow Jones Newswires. Netflix surged 6.1 per cent after it announced an extension of a streaming content contract with CBS. CBS rose 0.9 per cent.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 2.63 per cent from 2.64 per cent late Monday. The yield on the 30-year edged higher to 3.65 per cent from 3.64 per cent. Bond prices and yields move inversely.