OP-ED: What A Difference A Year Makes: US Equities Surge In First Half Of 2023
Published July 7, 2023
As the Federal Reserve took its foot off the brakes, interest rates declined and stocks powered ahead. With the Fed’s downward pressure on the market declining, the NASDAQ in particular found reason to bid up stock prices. Large-cap technology stocks like Apple powered on, fueled by excitement over the developments in artificial intelligence. Apple closed for the first time at a $3 trillion market cap, which is more than the gross domestic product of France and many other countries. These large company stocks’ rises spread to the broader NASDAQ universe, where the slight ease of inflation and the Fed pause in rate hikes were celebrated. The NASDAQ closed the first half of 2023 up 32 percent – the largest such gain in 40 years.
For months, the Federal Reserve has kept a lid on the stock market as inflation took the spotlight. The remedy for inflation, according to the Fed, was to raise interest rates until inflation was brought under control. A year ago, the supply chain crisis was raging, and the Fed was initiating its aggressive rate-hike policy. The war in Ukraine was a few months old at midyear 2022, and China was still in its zero-tolerance phase of COVID-19 lockdowns. As July 2023 advances, the Fed largely has completed its rate-hiking campaign. The annual rate of change in inflation is about half the peak level reported in June 2022. The supply chain crisis briefly flipped to a glut, and supply chains now appear to be normalizing. China has reopened, and Russia is experiencing internal turmoil and surrendering a bit of ground in Ukraine.
Last week, the U.S. Commerce Department revised U.S. GDP […]