First Quarter 2024 - Review and Outlook

What Just Happened? Last year’s bull market stormed into 2024. The S&P 500® Index of large stocks returned over 10% in the March quarter, one of the best first quarters of this century. The other major U.S. equity indices – the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the NASDAQ Composite Index – enjoyed similarly strong March quarters, up 6% and 9%, respectively. These star turns were anchored in economic strength: U.S. real gross domestic product (GDP) surged by 3.4% in the December 2023 quarter, well above the economy’s 10-year average annual growth rate of 2%.

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