June-Market Midpoint

Hello everyone, and welcome to the June 2023 edition of the boodle blog! If this is your first time here, welcome! If you are a frequent visitor, we thank you for checking out our blog. We write one blog a month that contains our opinions on what is happening in the stock markets and how that news might affect you & your portfolio.
Here at boodle, we work closely with individuals, schools & districts and small to midsize businesses. We believe that everyone should understand how markets work, so that they can understand and grow their money. You're never too young or too old to learn these lessons, and we really enjoy working with our clients.
Now that the market is nearly at the halfway point of the year, let's take a quick look at the numbers in the indexes to get an idea on what's happening.
Looking at the DOW, we see a YTD (year to date) return of +1.86%. The S&P 500 sits at +11.53%, pretty much it's historical annual return. The NASDAQ is the clear winner with a return of +26.51%.
Now let's turn our attention to the economy and the stock market, to see where we've been and more importantly, where we're going.
Boodle called a bottom in the market in the November 2022 edition of the boodle blog. Since that time, the market has advanced significantly as we mentioned above. Many of the financial experts appear to be focused on interest rate hikes, the Russia-Ukraine war and other news headlines - that's not our focus here at boodle. We try to be a contrarian voice in the world of investing, and what we attempt to do, and it is not easy- is follow trends. Is the market trending up? Is the market trending down? We want to "zig" when the experts "zag".
We also rely on our market-data research, and it continues to give us positive signals. We see these signals in the May jobs report which came out Friday June 2 and it showed that the economy remains strong, and more jobs were added than the economist expected. Housing starts remain robust, and home builders' confidence has increased month over month from April to May.
The May jobs' report indicates that the Federal Reserve Chair may hike rates a quarter of a point, but we will take a wait and see attitude on that. The banking industry provided a lot of fear in the market in recent months, but going forward, we expect that fear level to decrease.
So, what does all of this mean to you?
We are maintaining our opinion that markets will continue expand and that you should continue to add to your portfolio using dollar-cost-averaging. We think that many Retail investors have sold some of their holdings and they are now sitting on the sidelines. But because you are a boodle member, you understand the information we send to you on this site, and you will do very well financially as you continue your journey on the road to financial freedom. Thank you for choosing boodle and we hope to see you back here next month.