For stock traders, the middle months of 2019 got crazy enough that one veteran called them weirder than the financial crisis. The beginning and end, on the other hand, featured tranquility with few precedents in financial markets.[NEW YORK] For stock traders, the middle months of 2019 got crazy enough that one veteran called them weirder than the financial crisis. The beginning and end, on the other hand, featured tranquility with few precedents in financial markets.
The S&P 500 started the year by rising in nine of the first 10 weeks. Now it's closing it out with 11 gains out of the past 12 weeks, a feat of concerted advances that occurred only once before since 1985. The Nasdaq Composite Index just missed climbing for a 12 straight day, the most in a decade, and, up 12.7 per cent, is on pace for its best fourth quarter since 2004.
While a category of Wall Street wags starts panicking when gains come this easy, anyone who heeded warnings about euphoria after the Nasdaq surged 16.5 per cent in the first quarter has missed a 16.7 per cent jump since it ended. Gains don't always beget losses in the stock market - ask anyone who has watched the Faang stocks triple after he sold them in 2013.
Stocks ended Friday mixed as traders assessed a rally that's added more than US$5 trillion to equities this year, but the S&P 500 notched a fifth straight weekly advance and the Nasdaq Composite jumped above 9,000 for the first time. Blue-chip companies led the Dow Jones Industrial Average to a record high. The US dollar slid against most of its major peers. Treasuries rose. Oil rebounded from Friday's lows as a government report showed US crude inventories sank to a two-month low.