As the U.S. stock market approaches the end of June, Bespoke analyzed how it typically performs in the first half of a year.
The S&P 500 index is set to post significant gains for the first half of 2024, with its advance in the first six months of this year poised to crush the historical average, according to Bespoke Investment Group.
“The end of the first half of 2024 is rapidly approaching,” Bespoke said in a note emailed Wednesday, with the U.S. stock market in its final week of trading for June. The S&P 500 index, a gauge of U.S. large-cap stocks, finished Wednesday with a modest rise that increased its year-to-date gain to 14.8%, according to FactSet data.
While the index’s first-half performance in 2024 has been roughly in line with its gains in the first six months of last year and 2021, it blows the historical average gain of 4.72% since 1953 “out of the water,” Bespoke found.
A handful of Big Tech stocks have fueled the S&P 500’s rally this year, with shares of Nvidia Corp. surging around 155% in 2024, according to FactSet data. Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc., Google parent Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com Inc., and Microsoft Corp. have all seen their shares soar more than the S&P 500 index this year through Wednesday.
The U.S. stock market closed higher Wednesday, with the S&P 500 up 0.2%, the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite climbing 0.5%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average eking out a less than 0.1% gain.
The S&P 500 was up more than 4% in the second quarter, after jumping 10.2% in the first three months of this year, according to FactSet data. The S&P 500 has risen 3.8% so far in June.
Looking ahead, “July is a great time of the year for equities,” historically, according to Bespoke. “The best month of the year for the S&P 500, both since its inception and over the past 20 years, is July,” the firm said.
