Living its best life... The S&P 500, a wide-ranging index of publicly traded companies, jumped 13.1% over the last 3 months — Cue the Best Quarter Since '09 and Best 1st Quarter Since '98 trophies. The thing is, markets still haven't climbed out of the brutal hole from the end of last year.
- Let's back up to the holidays: From October to December, the S&P 500 fell 20%. And it bottomed out on Christmas Eve on concerns of rising interest rates.
- It's been all up since: From December 26th through this past Friday, the S&P 500 has risen 20.5% (and the tech-packed Nasdaq's up a shocking 25%).
- Plus, fossil fuel's getting into it: Oil prices rose up 32% last quarter as the international oil-controlling cartel OPEC cut supply a tad, and sanctions hit Venezuela and Iran's production.
There are so many people I need to thank... Politics — including January's government shutdown, the US/China Trade War, and Brexit — isn't on the list. Neither is the US economy, which has been slowing down (America's 2018 GDP was just retouched downward). It was all markets:
- Profits: They're the underlying driver of stock values, and they were still growing faster than the economy last quarter (Q1 earnings season starts soon, so we'll see if that continues).
- The Fed: The central bank's December decision to raise interest rates bothered investors. But to encourage investors and businesses, the Fed hasn't changed them since. Markets applaud it.
It's perfect weather for an IPO... There are a bunch of companies eager to go public in 2019, especially now that investors are feeling good again. Lyft squeezed itself in on the last day of the quarter, and its Silicon Valley tech buddies are lined up ready to go too. We'll see how the dump of fresh stocks onto Wall Street affects the market as a whole.