WING - 5 Growth Stocks to Buy for Steady Returns in June | Benzinga
Wall Street's popular adages are not matching this year. April is historically known for being favorable to investors. But this year, April ended on a disappointing note. For May, the popular adage is "Sell and Go Away." However, last month turned out highly successful for U.S. stock markets.
The three major stock indexes — the Dow, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite — were up 2.3%, 4.8% and 6.9%, respectively. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite recorded its best month since November 2023. On May 31, the blue-chip Dow soared 1.5% or 574.84 points, marking its best daily performance in 2024.
Market participants remain confident of U.S. equities despite a sticky inflation rate, a resilient labor market and a significant decline in thFe U.S. GDP growth rate. Wall Street is continuing its northbound journey in June too.
Positive Factors
The U.S. economy is cooling. The Department of Commerce revised the U.S. GDP growth rate downward for first-quarter 2024 to 1.3% from 1.6% reported earlier. The data is notably slower compared with the 3.4% GDP growth rate in fourth-quarter 2023. This marked the lowest quarterly GDP growth rate since second-quarter 2022.
The labor market remains resilient. The U.S. economy added 272,000 jobs in May, surpassing the consensus estimate of 190,000 and April's data of 165,000. However, the unemployment rate edged up to 4%, for the first time since January 2022, and from 3.9% in the previous month. Labor market data eliminates the fear of a near-term recession.
Corporate earnings for the first quarter of 2024 continued to be solid. Total earnings of ...