April 4, 2023

The S&P 500 moved higher in March, though equity performance has been extremely narrow, concentrated in some large technology and technology-adjacent companies that dominate the index.  Nothing like a couple of bank failures and the resultant lower bond rates to encourage investors to crowd back in into the largest, higher quality, non-financial stocks.  The S&P 500 gained 3.7% and two of the largest stocks in the index, Apple and Microsoft, accounted for about half of the gain.  It is quite amazing to experience this kind of stock market performance in a month when two well-known bank stocks went to zero!  Information Technology (+12.0%) and Communication Services (+10.4%) were the best S&P sectors, while Financials (-7.3%) and Real Estate (-1.4%) were the worst performing sectors.  From a style perspective, growth beat value everywhere during March and large-cap stocks outperformed mid- and small-cap stocks.