U.S. stocks on Thursday — Leap Day — capped a strong opening two months of 2024. While the so-called Magnificent Seven tech stocks continued to lead much of the stock-market rally that propelled the S&P 500
SPX,
the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA
and the Nasdaq Composite
COMP
to record highs this month, some of the beaten-down corners of the market also found the spotlight. Investors want to know if the positive momentum is finally spilling out beyond the megacap technology names.
The U.S. stock market enjoyed a surprisingly robust start to the new year, with the S&P 500 and the Dow industrials advancing 6.8% and 3.5% in the first two months of 2024, respectively, to notch their best start to a year since 2019. The Nasdaq Composite surged 7.2% over the same period, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
SOURCE: DOW JONES MARKET DATA
For the month, all three major benchmark indexes booked their best month since the end of 2023, while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq scored their best February since 2015, per Dow Jones Market Data. What’s more, all 11 of the large-cap index’s sectors finished in the green this month, as some long-suffering sectors of the stock market rebounded to help drive a surge that lifted the S&P 500 by 5.2% in February, according to FactSet data. While information technology
XX:SP500.45,
consumer discretionary
XX:SP500.25
and communication services
XX:SP500.50
sectors — home to the “Magnificent Seven” — received most of the attention after blockbuster fourth-quarter earnings, some lagging sectors also managed to come out winners. Those include industrials
XX:SP500.20
and materials
XX:SP500.15,
two cyclical sectors that each outpaced the information-technology sector this month by less than 1 percentage point, according to FactSet data. See: A growing number of stocks are joining the market’s rally — even as Big Tech still gets the most attention Phillip Colmar, managing partner and global strategist at Macro Research Board Partners, said the sector rotation is “constructive” given the potential “no landing” outcome of the Fed’s monetary-policy tightening cycle, which could result in a solid trend or above-trend economic growth with inflation still edging lower to a 2% target. Meanwhile, improvement in corporate earnings-growth expectations offset the rise in Treasury yields
BX:TMUBMUSD10Y
over the past month, further supporting the broad rally in the stock market and a rotation to the laggards, Colmar told MarketWatch in a phone interview on Wednesday. See: Soft landing for the economy? How about no landing? The U.S. is still growing fast. Of course, Wa …
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SPX,
the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA
and the Nasdaq Composite
COMP
to record highs this month, some of the beaten-down corners of the market also found the spotlight. Investors want to know if the positive momentum is finally spilling out beyond the megacap technology names.
The U.S. stock market enjoyed a surprisingly robust start to the new year, with the S&P 500 and the Dow industrials advancing 6.8% and 3.5% in the first two months of 2024, respectively, to notch their best start to a year since 2019. The Nasdaq Composite surged 7.2% over the same period, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
SOURCE: DOW JONES MARKET DATA
For the month, all three major benchmark indexes booked their best month since the end of 2023, while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq scored their best February since 2015, per Dow Jones Market Data. What’s more, all 11 of the large-cap index’s sectors finished in the green this month, as some long-suffering sectors of the stock market rebounded to help drive a surge that lifted the S&P 500 by 5.2% in February, according to FactSet data. While information technology
XX:SP500.45,
consumer discretionary
XX:SP500.25
and communication services
XX:SP500.50
sectors — home to the “Magnificent Seven” — received most of the attention after blockbuster fourth-quarter earnings, some lagging sectors also managed to come out winners. Those include industrials
XX:SP500.20
and materials
XX:SP500.15,
two cyclical sectors that each outpaced the information-technology sector this month by less than 1 percentage point, according to FactSet data. See: A growing number of stocks are joining the market’s rally — even as Big Tech still gets the most attention Phillip Colmar, managing partner and global strategist at Macro Research Board Partners, said the sector rotation is “constructive” given the potential “no landing” outcome of the Fed’s monetary-policy tightening cycle, which could result in a solid trend or above-trend economic growth with inflation still edging lower to a 2% target. Meanwhile, improvement in corporate earnings-growth expectations offset the rise in Treasury yields
BX:TMUBMUSD10Y
over the past month, further supporting the broad rally in the stock market and a rotation to the laggards, Colmar told MarketWatch in a phone interview on Wednesday. See: Soft landing for the economy? How about no landing? The U.S. is still growing fast. Of course, Wa …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]