S&P 500
Financial stocks lead stellar first-quarter stock market gainsPosted by RJ and Makay on Apr 03, 2012 |
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This year’s first-quarter stock market performance was the best in many years. The Standard and Poor’s (S&P) 500 index rose 12% from the end of Q4 2011, and the Dow Jones industrial average surged 8.14%, the largest gains since Q1 1998. The Nasdaq showed the largest gain with an increase of 19%, its strongest first-quarter gain since 1991. The increases replenished almost $1.85 trillion into the market since January.
Executives at Standard & Poors 500 companies are buying back their company stock at a pace not seen since the latter part of the financial crisis in 2009. Sixty-six insiders at 50 companies bought shares between August 3 and August 9, the most since the five days ended March 9, 2009, when the S&P 500 sunk to a 12-year low, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
A new quarterly survey released Monday by Northern Trust indicates that risk managers were more risk averse in the second quarter of 2011, yet almost three-quarters of survey recipients are optimistic about job growth and over half expect short-term corporate earnings growth. 42% of managers said they were more risk averse in Q2 than they were in Q1 2011, when 36% of managers said they were more risk averse than in the previous quarter.
