Wall Street went through a hanging period in the first quarter of this year. Since 1998, the S&P 500 has made its best this year by rising to 13.1 percent already in the first quarter. It was a huge gain for the broad index too.
The Dow International Average, NASDAQ, and Russell 2000 are accompanying the S&P 500 in its successful first quarter of the year 2019. While the technically heavy NASDAQ gained more than 16 percent, Dow rallied with 30 stocks to more than 11 percent and even the small caps Russell 2000 raised to 14.2 percent.
The stocks of the tech market ruled the US this year by high rocketing to more than 20 percent hike in the first quarter. While the stocks of Apple and Microsoft, the two technologically humongous companies’ rode as high as to 16 percent each for the time period, Xerox the fax and copy machine Company’s stocks touched the height of 60 percent and started the year on a very successful note. This was totally unexpected though was the best-performing among all the stocks in the S&P 500.
Apart from the shares of the tech world, sectors like industrial, real estate and energy shares outshined the first quarter this year. While real estate enhanced from low-interest rates, the high rates of the oil gave a boost up to energy and the US-China trade negotiations made the people optimistic about the industrial shares. However, it was not all green and happy for all the sectors, the health care and financial sectors were the slow coaches in S&P 500 with the former having 6 percent and the latter to 8 percent only.
The shares of the companies that followed Xerox were Xilinx, Arista Networks, the cosmetic company Coty, and the giant restaurant chain Chipotle Mexican Grill. Nevertheless, the weaklings were Biogen, Kraft Heinz, and Century Link whose shares dropped down by more than 20 percent.
The Irish shares doubled the performance of the S&P 500 this year by rising to more than 30 percent on a worldwide basis. While the shares of Canada, Italy, and Greece rose by more than 13 percent. Japan’s Nikkei and other Indian stocks are lagging behind among their counterparts globally.
Stocks were not the only asserts that performed so well in the first quarter part. Lean hog futures were hiked by 45 percent along with the gasoline and crude oil of the Nation-States surged up to 30 percent but the rates of wheat and coffee dropped drastically to 7.2 percent.
