The Major Markets closed mostly higher as the Nasdaq, Dow Jones, S&P 500, and MSCI World Indices all closed higher with each seeing new all-time highs last week. Furthermore, the S&P 500 traded over 3100 for the first time ever on Tuesday, followed by the Dow crossing over 28,000 for the first time on Friday.
To say that Emerging Markets didn’t fair as well would be an understatement. The category fell 1.5% last week due to continuing pressures in China. The MSCI China index experience a 3% pullback as tensions between the mainland and Hong Kong reached a new level.
Protesters have now taken arms with bows and arrows, bricks, and Molotov cocktails in their resistance from police. Hong Kong’s Polytechnic University has become a stronghold for students and protestors while police try to retake control. This turmoil has had a significant economic impact on the region as the MSCI Hong Kong Index fell over 5% last week and sits just above flat for the year.
https://twitter.com/jamespomfret/status/1196186422404775936
Finally, back stateside, the longer end of the yield curve traded lower. As of Friday’s close, the 2-year fell 7 basis points, while the 10-year fell 10 basis points. The cumulative decline in interest rates this year has led to an impressive return in most of the bond indices. Year to date, the Bloomberg Barclays US Aggregate Bond Index sits with an impressive 8.3% return.
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The S&P 500® Index is a capitalization index of 500 stock-designed to measure performance of the broad domestic economy through changes in the aggregate market value of stock representing all major industries.
https://us.spindices.com/indices/equity/sp-500
The Dow Jones Industrial Average® (The Dow®), is a price-weighted measure of 30 U.S. blue-chip companies. The index covers all industries except transportation and utilities.
https://us.spindices.com/indices/equity/dow-jones-industrial-average
The NASDAQ Composite Index measures all NASDAQ domestic and international based common type stocks listed on The NASDAQ Stock Market. Today the NASDAQ Composite includes over 2,500 companies, more than most other stock market indexes. Because it is so broad-based, the Composite is one of the most widely followed and quoted major market indexes
https://indexes.nasdaqomx.com/Index/Overview/COMP
The MSCI World Index, which is part of The Modern Index Strategy, is a broad global equity benchmark that represents large and mid-cap equity performance across 23 developed markets countries. It covers approximately 85% of the free float-adjusted market capitalization in each country and MSCI World benchmark does not offer exposure to emerging markets.
The MSCI Emerging Markets (EM) Index is designed to represent the performance of large- and mid-cap securities in 24 Emerging Markets countries of the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. As of December 2017 it had more than 830 constituents and covered approximately 85% of the free float-adjusted market capitalization in each country.
The S&P GSCI Crude Oil index provides investors with a reliable and publicly available benchmark for investment performance in the crude oil market.
https://us.spindices.com/indices
Companies in the S&P 500 Sector Indices are classified based on the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS®).
https://us.spindices.com/indices