{"id":4548,"date":"2017-04-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-04-04T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/march-2017-market-insight\/"},"modified":"2022-02-07T13:26:29","modified_gmt":"2022-02-07T17:26:29","slug":"march-2017-market-insight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/blog\/2017\/04\/04\/march-2017-market-insight\/","title":{"rendered":"March 2017 Market Insight"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>It was an interesting month in financial markets as U.S. stocks and bonds were largely flat, while international stocks (MSCI EAFE) surged 2.75%. This surge of international stocks has been very short-lived so far, but the surge is worth noting due to its rarity. As illustrated in the chart below, international developed market stocks have been in a downtrend when compared to the S&amp;P 500 for over seven years, a tremendous amount of time. Whether the recent performance of international stocks will be a sustained trend that lasts for more than a measly few months remains to be seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"612\" src=\"https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/march_2017_graph-1024x612.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5318\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/march_2017_graph-1024x612.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/march_2017_graph-300x179.png 300w, https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/march_2017_graph-768x459.png 768w, https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/march_2017_graph.png 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>In other news for the month of March, the Federal Reserve raised the benchmark interest rate from 0.75% to 1.0%, an increase of 25 basis points. This move was largely expected by the market and therefore had little impact on returns of stocks and bonds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Below are the returns of major indexes for March:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table is-style-stripes\"><table><tbody><tr><td><strong>Index<\/strong><\/td><td><strong>March<\/strong><\/td><td><strong>YTD<\/strong><\/td><\/tr><tr><td>S&amp;P 500 (US large cap)<\/td><td>0.12%<\/td><td>6.07%<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>Russell 2000 (US small cap)<\/td><td>0.13%<\/td><td>2.47%<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>Barclays US Aggregate Bond<\/td><td>-0.05%<\/td><td>0.82%<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>MSCI EAFE (developed international)<\/td><td>2.75%<\/td><td>7.25%<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was an interesting month in financial markets as U.S. stocks and bonds were largely flat, while international stocks (MSCI EAFE) surged 2.75%. This surge of international stocks has been very short-lived so far, but the surge is worth noting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"post_statement":"","post_description":"","post_cta":"","post_button":"Read More","post_button_url":"","compliance_id":"","post_disclaimer":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[203],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4548"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4548"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5321,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4548\/revisions\/5321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitcomb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}