What’s Not To Like About April
Even those showers bring flowers.
The S&P 500 Index has closed in the green at the end of every month from November forward.It ended March at 5,245.35 and is up 9.969 percent so far in 2024.
That’s 10 percent to people who celebrate, and it means we have back-to-back double-digit up quarters for the first time in more than 10 years and only the sixth time in the last 50.
People who run money for a living and write about it on social media platforms are using terms like “greatest bull markets ever” to describe what’s happening.
And it’s only the first day of April, one of the best months for stocks, as this tidy display of information from Grant Hawkridge of All Star Charts demonstrates:
Up months in November, December, January, February, and March bode well for April and for the rest of the year… and for at least the next year.
The data show some second- and third-quarter weakness during what Hirsch has identified as the “Worst 6 Months” period. They also show some huge fourth-quarter rallies.
And they also show that the last months of the year have been up all 11 times we’ve seen a positive January-February-March run to open a year, with an average annual gain of 11.9 percent.
Some of it will sound smart. The takeaway after separating wheat from chaff is that risk management is important and you should allocate your assets in a framework that allows you to sleep at night.
The reality is that the US economy continues to defy expectations.
Gross domestic product expanded at a faster annual rate than previously estimated in the fourth quarter,the Bureau of Economic Analysis said last week, growing by 3.4 percent versus a prior estimate of 3.2 percent.
And real domestic income grew by 4.8 percent.
This is the kind of thing you see when productivity is on the rise, like back in the mid- to late-1990s, GDP consistently beating to the upside on stronger output.
Perhaps we’ll hear more about this dynamic when Jerome Powell is back at the mic on Wednesday to share his economic outlook at the Stanford Business, Government, and Society Forum in California.
Welcome to April.
