Hope all is well with you. 9/11 reminds us every year of the bravery of our first responders and we don’t thank them enough.
It was a down week for stocks. The Dow Jones fell all 5 days this week but none of the daily declines exceeded 1%. The NASDAQ posted a slightly smaller decline. Small-cap stocks continued to slip in the latest week, extending a recent run of underperformance versus their large-cap peers. The Russell 2000 Index surged nearly 20% in the first two and a half months of 2021 but has declined nearly 6% since achieving a record high in mid-March.
The market could be stalling and it bears watching. The uptrend in large cap stocks has been largely uninterrupted, some complacency might be setting in. The last time the S&P 500 experienced a 5% or more pullback was about a year ago, in September 2020, when stocks declined 9.6% from the highs. If you have money sitting on the sidelines waiting to be invested next week is worth watching. If this week’s downdraft continues it could be a potential buying opportunity for stocks. If you are fully invested, realize bull-market pullbacks are generally short-lived and can happen unexpectedly. Instead of trying to time the market stay invested and ride out whatever volatility we experience.
I am here to help at any time. If you would like to schedule a phone/web conference appointment, I have included a link to my calendar below and you can self schedule. The link will allow you to schedule either phone or zoom.