Weekly Market Commentary
The First Quarter Ended on a Positive Note
Posted on April 3, 2023
Market Commentary by Larson COO Mitchell Wood
This helped to curb some of the initial year-to-date losses which has placed this sector at the bottom of the list. |
---|
On an economic front, the quarter ended with the results of the Personal Consumption Expenditures. The 5.0 percent headline year-over-year reading for February’s PCE Price Index was a welcome reduction from January’s 5.3 percent number. This is the lowest number for the measure of consumer spending since September of 2021. The reduction in the PCE Price Index gave market analysts optimism that inflation is continuing to subside, relative to the recent peak. Finally, Treasuries rose last week as the yield curve recovered from some of the drop experienced the week prior. The move was mostly in the shorter end of the curve which steepened slightly. This sent the Bloomberg Barclays Aggregate bond Index down, while mortgages saw greater losses for the week and moderate gains within the corporates. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/27/business/silicon-valley-bank-first-citizens.html _____________________________ The S&P 500® Index is a capitalization index of 500 stock-designed to measure performance of the broad domestic economy through changes in the aggregate market value of stock representing all major industries. https://us.spindices.com/indices/equity/sp-500 The Dow Jones Industrial Average® (The Dow®), is a price-weighted measure of 30 U.S. blue-chip companies. The index covers all industries except transportation and utilities. https://us.spindices.com/indices/equity/dow-jones-industrial-average The NASDAQ Composite Index measures all NASDAQ domestic and international based common type stocks listed on The NASDAQ Stock Market. Today the NASDAQ Composite includes over 2,500 companies, more than most other stock market indexes. Because it is so broad-based, the Composite is one of the most widely followed and quoted major market indexes. https://indexes.nasdaqomx.com/Index/Overview/COMP The MSCI World Index, which is part of The Modern Index Strategy, is a broad global equity benchmark that represents large and mid-cap equity performance across 23 developed markets countries. It covers approximately 85% of the free float-adjusted market capitalization in each country and MSCI World benchmark does not offer exposure to emerging markets. The MSCI Emerging Markets (EM) Index is designed to represent the performance of large- and mid-cap securities in 24 Emerging Markets countries of the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. As of December 2017, it had more than 830 constituents and covered approximately 85% of the free float-adjusted market capitalization in each country. https://www.msci.com/ The S&P GSCI Crude Oil index provides investors with a reliable and publicly available benchmark for investment performance in the crude oil market. https://us.spindices.com/indices Companies in the S&P 500 Sector Indices are classified based on the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS®). https://us.spindices.com/indices |