The stock market has just had its best first quarter since 1998. Businessweek reports that this is now the third year in a row that stocks have started off on a tear, with the Standard & Poor’s index of 500 stocks gaining 12 percent so far. In 2010, the S&P 500 added 4.8 percent through March; in 2011, it rose 5.4 percent in the first quarter. In both years, by the end of April, the market had started to lose steam. The question is: Are we in for another spring swoon?
Jeffrey Kleintop, chief market strategist for LPL Financial (LPLA), thinks the answer is yes, although he doesn’t believe it will fall as hard as it did in the last two years. In his March 26 weekly market commentary (PDF), Kleintop writes: “On April 23, 2010 and April 29, 2011, the S&P 500 made peaks that were followed by 16-19% losses that were not recouped for more than five months.” In a phone interview, Kleintop said that he thinks the S&P will decline by 5 percent to 10 percent from the end of April through the middle or the end of summer 2012….
Find out more at
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-03-30/stocks-yet-another-spring-slide
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