A slow end to a big quarter for global markets, with the big question now, where to next?
On Wall Street, the Dow slipped 82.38 points, or 0.97% Tuesday to end the quarter at 8,447.00.
The Standard & Poor 500 eased 7.91 points, or 0.85%, to 919.32 and Nasdaq lost 9.02 points, or 0.5%, to 1,835.04.
For the quarter the S&P 500 posted its best quarterly performance since the fourth quarter of 1998, thanks to the strong rebound from March. It was up 15%
For the month of June, the Dow shed 0.6%, the S&P 500 inched up 0.02%, and Nasdaq climbed 3.4%.
Since its 12-year closing low on March 9, the S&P 500 is up 35.9%.
But markets everywhere have been moving sideways for the past three weeks to a month as investors assess the state of the global and national economies and those now legendary green shoots.
But over the past three months, all but one of the S&P 500’s 10 industry groups have pulled into positive territory — with the biggest gains seen in the hardest hit financial sector, up 30% for the quarter and off 4.2% for the year-to-date.
The cyclically sensitive technology sector proved the second-biggest advancer, climbing 18% during the quarter and 25% year to date.
The S&P 500’s 2-year-plus low in early March saw it down more than 57% from the record high it set in October 2007.
The Australian sharemarket ended the financial year higher, but lower.
On the day the ASX200 index was up 68 points, or 1.8% on the day at 3954.9 points, while the All Ordinaries index rose 65.1 points, or 1.7% to 3947.8 points.
The meant the ASX200 has now posted four consecutive months of gains and is up 6.3% since the start of 2009.
For the June quarter, the ASX200 rose 10.4%, its best return in four and a half, while the All Ordinaries added 11.7%, the best return since the end of 2001.
The rise over the June quarter was the best performance on the market since December 2001 and restored about $220 billion to shareholder wealth and taking the value of the Australian market back above $1 trillion for the first time since the Lehman Brothers driven meltdown started last September.
However, it is still down 24.2% over the past 12 months, its biggest fiscal-year loss since 1982 and the recession before last.
Australia’s share drop over the past year is in line with most of the main overseas markets. Japan’s Nikkei 225 lost about 26% in local currency terms over the past year, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng is off about 16%.
London’s FTSE 100 fell 1% Tuesday, but was up 8.2% for the quarter, the performance since the final quarter of 2003. It has gained 22.8% since touching a six-year low on March 9.
The FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares fell 1.1% on Tuesday to 850.17.
The index rose 15.9% over the second quarter, its best performance since 1999, having hit a lifetime low on March 9.
The other major European index, the Stoxx 600, fell 1.1% on the day but was also up 17% for the quarter, the biggest quarterly rise since the final quarter of 1999.
The Nikkei rose 174.97, or 1.8% yesterday, to close at 9,958.44 in Tokyo.the Nikkei had a big quarter, rising 23.4% for the biggest quarter since 1995.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index rose 1.2% on Tuesday. the index rose 29% for the quarter, the biggest rise since the index started 21 years ago.
Emerging market stocks recorded even stronger quarterly gains and the Chinese market is up around 62% this year, thanks to the surge in bank lending and cash from the Government’s huge stimulus program.
