Market Commentary by Mitchell Wood, Larson COO

The Major Markets closed higher across the board last week. The Nasdaq expanded the year-to-date gains another three and a quarter percent which took the performance to over 30 percent for the year. Furthermore, this marked the 8th consecutive week of gains for the tech index and the highest weekly gains since the end of the first quarter. This was echoed by the S&P 500 which also had the best performance since the week of March 31. The 2.58 percent weekly gain for the S&P 500 sent the index above the 4,400 level as of Friday.

The markets were focused on a number of economic-related items last week. The week began with Consumer Price Index readings that came in as expected. The overall CPI headline, as well as the Core subindex, reflected further cooling in the year-over-year numbers.

This positive development gave further optimism toward the belief that the Fed would hold interest rates steady for the first time after 10 rate increases.

This was confirmed Wednesday when the FOMC announced that they were pausing the Fed Funds rate-hikes and holding steady at the 5.00 percent to 5.25 percent target range. However, the dot-plot released from the FOMC meeting saw the average longer-term rate expectations rise from 5.1 percent to 5.6 percent for 2023. This implies some additional rate increases during the second half of the year. On Thursday, the S&P 500 experienced a sizeable jump in the market which many attributed to a short-squeeze as the market repriced the forward looking expectations with a more favorable view.

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The S&P 500® Index is a capitalization index of 500 stock-designed to measure performance of the broad domestic economy through changes in the aggregate market value of stock representing all major industries. https://us.spindices.com/indices/equity/sp-500 The Dow Jones Industrial Average® (The Dow®), is a price-weighted measure of 30 U.S. blue-chip companies. The index covers all industries except transportation and utilities. https://us.spindices.com/indices/equity/dow-jones-industrial-average The NASDAQ Composite Index measures all NASDAQ domestic and international based common type stocks listed on The NASDAQ Stock Market. Today the NASDAQ Composite includes over 2,500 companies, more than most other stock market indexes. Because it is so broad-based, the Composite is one of the most widely followed and quoted major market indexes. https://indexes.nasdaqomx.com/Index/Overview/COMP The MSCI World Index, which is part of The Modern Index Strategy, is a broad global equity benchmark that represents large and mid-cap equity performance across 23 developed markets countries. It covers approximately 85% of the free float-adjusted market capitalization in each country and MSCI World benchmark does not offer exposure to emerging markets. The MSCI Emerging Markets (EM) Index is designed to represent the performance of large- and mid-cap securities in 24 Emerging Markets countries of the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. As of December 2017, it had more than 830 constituents and covered approximately 85% of the free float-adjusted market capitalization in each country. https://www.msci.com/ The S&P GSCI Crude Oil index provides investors with a reliable and publicly available benchmark for investment performance in the crude oil market. https://us.spindices.com/indices Companies in the S&P 500 Sector Indices are classified based on the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS®). https://us.spindices.com/indices