Shared by Sam Lawhon, Larson Director of Investments

Market Recap

The S&P 500 index rose 2.7% this week, its first weekly gain in a month, as the technology and consumer discretionary sectors helped lead a broad rebound amid better-than-expected earnings.

The market benchmark ended Friday’s session at 5,099.96. Despite the week’s advance, the S&P 500 is down 2.9% for the month due to the index’s three consecutive weeks of losses earlier in April. Just two trading sessions remain in the month.

The S&P 500 is still solidly in positive territory for 2024 with a year-to-date gain of 6.9% thanks to a Q1 rally.

This week’s climb came as many companies including Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL, GOOG) reported quarterly results above analysts’ expectations. Among the 164 S&P 500 components that released quarterly reports this week, nearly 81% had better-than-expected earnings while 57% had better-than-expected revenue, according to Bloomberg data.

All of the S&P 500’s sectors rose this week, led by technology, which jumped 5.1%, and consumer discretionary, which climbed 3.5%. Other strong gainers included communication services, up 2.7%, and industrials, up 1.8%.

The technology sector’s gainers included shares of Tyler Technologies (TYL), which rose 14% on the week as the provider of software and technology services for the public sector reported higher-than-expected Q1 results and forecast full-year earnings above analysts’ mean estimates.

In consumer discretionary, shares of Hasbro (HAS) jumped 17% as the toy maker also posted better-than-expected Q1 results.

The gainers in communication services were led by Alphabet’s shares, which jumped 12% as the Google parent not only reported stronger-than-expected Q1 results but even unveiled its first-ever quarterly dividend alongside a $70 billion stock buyback program.

The market next week will see earnings reports from more heavyweight companies including Amazon.com (AMZN), Eli Lilly (LLY), Coca-Cola (KO), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), McDonald’s (MCD), Mastercard (MA), Qualcomm (QCOM, Pfizer (PFE), Apple (AAPL), ConocoPhillips (COP) and Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A, BRK.B).

Investors will be focused on April jobs numbers with monthly nonfarm payrolls and unemployment rates due on Friday. Other data expected next week include April consumer confidence, March construction spending and April auto sales.

Provided by MT Newswires

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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