from a July 29th letter to clients
April 1st through June 30st, 2016.
Six months into the year, the turmoil of January and February seems like a distant memory, but while April and May were relatively calm for markets, the end of June took worldwide investors for a ride in the form of the Brexit vote.
The panic was short lived however, as the 5% drop over the first two days of trading was all but recouped by June 30th.
Second Quarter GDP‘s first reading came in at a disappointing read of 1.2%. This is much less than forecast by about half, and may signal the fed will keep the already low federal funds rate where it is for even longer. The recently revised final reading for the 1st quarter came in at 0.8%, so in total, the first half of 2016 looks like too many other first half’s of this “recovery”.
While Job growth continued its very slow growth pattern of the last few years in the April & May, June was a pleasant surprise with an increase of 287,000 jobs. While this isn’t spectacular growth, and is only one month’s number, it was encouraging. Hopefully it will continue.
For the quarter, the S&P 500 was up just under 2%[i], International Developed markets were down just over 1%, while Emerging Markets[ii] and Global Real Estate were up 0.66% & 4.48% respectively[iii]. The U.S. Bond Market was up 2.21%[iv]
Now that we are in the second half of 2016, we are gearing up for the Election season. On average, U.S. Presidential election years are positive for stocks; we will see if that remains true for this year.
[i] Morningstar
[ii] MSCI world ex US
[iii] S&P Global REIT
[iv] Barclay’s US aggregate Bond
