In April, the communication services and consumer discretionary sectors led gains in the S&P 500, returning to a leadership position after lagging earlier in 2021 amid a rotation into cyclical and “reopening” stocks.
Still, a wave of stronger-than-expected earnings results from companies across industries helped fuel the latest move higher in the broader market, with corporate profits rebounding alongside the pick-up in economic activity.
Underpinning the economic recovery has been the strong pace of vaccinations in the U.S., which has in turn enabled more business across the country to reopen and bolstered consumers’ confidence in a return to a semblance of normalcy.
I’m a little concerned about the second half of the year,” Allan Boomer, Momentum Advisors Chief Investment Officer, told Yahoo Finance.
We don’t really talk about the fact that there’s a lot of companies that have a lot of vacancies that are outstanding,” he added.
With uncertainty from the pandemic lifting, corporations have begun to announce ambitious new strategies, many of which involve massive investments into their future growth.
Verizon has struggled to grow its media business, declaring them nearly worthless with a $4.6 billion write-down in 2018.
We’re seeing very substantial inflation.” Rapidly rising prices are viewed with concern by investors as they can eat into returns, drive up interest rates and potentially cause long-term damage to the economy and living standards by eroding the value of workers’ wages.
The stock market kept hitting new record highs in the final week of April, with the Nasdaq posting a 5% or so gain for the month and the Dow Jones industrials up about 3% in that time.
— Credit Suisse Group AG’s business with Archegos Capital Management enabled the family office to undertake highly-leveraged stock bets with only minimal collateral posted, a strategy that exposed the lender to losses far exceeding its peers when the firm collapsed.Credit Suisse lent the family office of Bill Hwang funds allowing bets with leverage of up to ten times, and only asked for collateral worth 10% of the sums borrowed, according to a person familiar with the business.The leverage offered by the Swiss bank was in some cases double what other brokers gave Hwang, helping to push the loss to some $5.5 billion after the fund imploded in March.
The new valuation for the Jack Ma-founded company, the subject of a regulatory clampdown from Beijing that has halted its stock market flotation, was $144 billion as at the end of February, according to regulatory filings cited by the WSJ.