Quit gnashing your teeth every time a
member of the Fed board speaks. It’s time to sit back, relax and reminisce.
The Dow is up 13.78% this year, the
index’s best first-half showing since 1999. The quarter that ended on Friday
wasn’t a blockbuster like the one that preceded it, but the 2.27% gain was
solid.
Of course, memories don’t pay
dividends. The gnashing of teeth will begin again in earnest on Monday.
Few
strategists expect the market to repeat its first-half feats in the second half
of the year. There’s simply too much uncertainty about the actions of central
banks, and the Federal Reserve in particular. And yet, most strategists still
prefer U.S. stocks to almost any alternative — bonds are plunging, gold is
tarnished, emerging markets are no longer emerging.
Despite
the recent rise in volatility and dip in stock prices, the bull market in U.S.
equities is far from over, says Henry Smith, the chief investment officer at
Haverford Trust.
“I think this week is kind of a
reconfirmation that the bull is in full force,” he said. “What we saw
in the preceding three weeks was just a temporary dislocation due to a shift in
Fed policy.”
For the week, the Dow rose 110.2
points, or 0.74%, to end the week at 14,909.60. The Standard & Poor’s 500
was up 13.85 points to 1,606.28. The Nasdaq Composite rose 46 points, or 1.37%,
to 3,403.25.
On Friday, the Dow fell 114.89 points
as volume rose, but the trading spike was probably caused by index funds
trading stocks as some indexes were reshuffled, notes Ryan Larson, who leads
equity trading at RBC Global Asset Management.
Going forward, stocks could be held
back by the uncertainty over the timing of the Fed’s exit from its asset-buying
program. Larson thinks the recent drop in U.S. stocks has stabilized, but he
expects the S&P 500 to bounce around for the summer in a range from 1500 to
1650 as investors await word from the Fed ( Source:
Barrons Online).
