Market Commentary by Mitchell Wood, Larson COO

The Major Markets continued the climb higher, as all five indices ended in positive territory. Moreover, both the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 managed to see fresh 52-week highs. By Friday’s close, the Blue-Chip Index sat at the 4,500 level. This places the index just 6 percent below the all-time closing high back on July 3rd, 2022. Optimism in the equity market was given further strength Wednesday with the release of the Consumer Price Index. The June reading came in below expectations with the 0.2 percent month-over-month print in both the headline and core indices.

This cooler reading furthered the idea that the Fed would be nearing the end of their rate increases as inflation was falling back down to the Fed’s target rate. By the end of the week, Treasuries saw rates drop in all but the short-term durations. The greatest drop was in the 5-year duration, which closed at 4.04 percent yield. July’s preliminary reading of the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment survey also gave investors’ confidence. The 72.6 result was substantially higher than the 65.5 expected.

Looking ahead, Q2 Earnings Results will begin to take more of a center stage. The peak number of companies reporting will be the week of July 31^st.

But ahead of that, the investing public will get the results of the July 25-26th FOMC Meeting. The CME Group Fed Watch Tool anticipates one last 25-basis point increase with a 96 percent probability. Currently, this stands at what could be the peak for the Fed Funds Rate in this rate increase cycle.

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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