Our recent commentary includes quarterly observations to help frame recent market performance for our clients from a global investing standpoint.
The markets were mixed during the quarter, with domestic indices gaining ground while global markets sold off on the news of the Brexit vote. For the three months ending June 30th, the large cap S&P 500 index was up 2.46%, the mid/small cap Russell 2000 index gained 3.80%, and the international MSCI EAFE index declined by 1.45%.
The market was quite a story of Jekyll and Hyde during this past quarter. For the first half of the quarter, fears of a global recession, led by perceived weakness in China, dominated investor attention, and January delivered the worst returns for that month since 2009. By mid-February, a plethora of positive economic news, accompanied by a rally in oil prices, shifted investors from pessimism to optimism and we enjoyed much stronger returns, leading to mixed results on the quarter. For the first three months of 2016, the large cap S&P 500 index was up 1.3%, the mid/small cap Russell 2000 index decreased by 1.5%, and the international MSCI EAFE index fell by 3.0%.
Falling oil prices and slowing growth in China, combined with the Fed’s first rate hike in nine years, tempered stock market gains during the Fourth Quarter and left us with virtually flat returns for the year despite relatively strong US economic statistics. For the last three months of 2015, the large cap S&P 500 index was up 7.0%, the mid/small cap Russell 2000 index increased by 3.6%, and the international MSCI EAFE index gained 4.7%
