A lacklustre month

2024 started off with a whimper. January saw muted returns across most of the major markets. The “January effect”, the phenomenon where stock prices were seen to generally rise more in January than in other months of the year, was hopefully not a sign that tough times were to come.  Even the Magnificent Seven stocks (Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla) returned a paltry 2.02% on average in January 2024. In contrast, the average return of the Mag 7 was 21.11% in January 2023.

Holding rates steady

The Federal Reserve decided in the January FOMC meeting to hold rates steady in the 5.25% - 5.50% range. This is the fourth time the Fed has decided to maintain the status quo on its policy rate. The rate decision came days after the release of US GDP growth for 2023. The US economy grew 3.3%...