The Fragreport

The S&P 500 rose for the fifth straight month setting an all-time high and recording its best August since 1986 rising 7.0%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average also continued to rally gaining 7.6% while the NASDAQ Composite hit new all-time highs on multiple trading sessions rising a strong 9.6% for the month.

Equity markets continued their upward march in July on stronger economic data, continued central bank support and better than expected corporate earnings. These factors provided the necessary boost to investor sentiment to raise markets to new recovery highs.

Equity markets continued their upward rise in June, with the S&P 500 having its best quarterly performance since 1998. The Nasdaq Composite rose for the first time above 10,000, rising 6% for the month of June. The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial gained respectively 1.8% and 1.7%, with all indexes rising for three consecutive months.

Equity markets staged a strong rally in April continuing into May. The combination of government stimulus, Federal Reserve activating liquidity programs combined with monetary policy accommodation and optimism over businesses re-opening across the country drove markets higher.

This month’s Monthly Market Commentary aims to review the financial market, provide an analysis of the situation at hand, and our outlook for the rest of 2020 as the market faces the greater impacts of the coronavirus (COVID-19).

This month’s market commentary features our outlook for 2020. In this edition, we review general market consensus forecasts for 2020 and compare them against our expectations for the year. Equity markets got off to a strong start to the new decade, with the S&P 500 adding more than 3% by mid-January on the back of stronger than expected early fourth quarter earnings reports.