May 2024 Market Review & Commentary

We hope you are doing well and that you had an enjoyable & reflective Memorial Day weekend in addition to a wonderful end to the month of May. I would like to begin the May 2024 summary by taking the time to personally thank all of you that have served or currently serving our great country including your loved ones that supported you in your services.  And thank you to all families who have had to endure the ultimate sacrifice of the loss of a loved one for the protection of our personal freedoms.

        Secondly, I would like to follow up on our earlier announcement last week welcoming Joy Neal to the Three Leaf Financial Family in the Advisor Assistant role. Joy made it through her first week and overtime she will be taking an increased role of assisting me on a day-to-day basis with the goal of improving client service. We are very happy to have her on the team.

        Just like I am happy to add Joy to our team, I would also be very happy to post monthly commentary that does not require me to interpret how on-going economic data might affect the Federal Reserve’s on-going quandary for making a move in the benchmark interest rate. Unfortunately, this month is not at that moment …

         All investors were pleased to see the markets rebound in May as all the economic readings during the month fell within the “goldilocks” criteria of being not too “hot” and not too “cold” in direct relation to the economy. We saw April CPI data come right in line with expectations at 3.4% year over year but then we saw Core CPI come in lower than forecast for the first time in three years. Employers added 175,000 jobs in April, which was well under the 240,000 estimate and this was paired nicely with lower retail sales and existing home sales. This continuing teeter totter surely supports our bumpy road back to normalcy but the markets in May certainly liked the data. We saw the S&P 500 gain +4.80% and the DOW Jones increase by +2.30%. After the tumultuous ride for the technology heavy Nasdaq in April, it was in reversal mode by posting a +6.88% return for May as many mega-cap tech names rallied in anticipation of the Q1 corporate report from Nvidia.

         As we look forward, our attention will be on the FOMC meetings which conclude on June 12th and many investor and market headlines will be drawn to Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer Conference which begins today, June 10th through June 14th.