A big quarter for stockmarkets with few losers. But for the month of March did provide a more sedate performance for some.
The MSCI all-cap share index excluding the US was up by 6.9% for the first quarter, in the best performance since the final quarter of 2013.
The ASX rose 3.5% for the quarter, while the US benchmark, the Standard & Poor’s 500 was up 5.5% and the Dow 4.6% by the close of trading on Saturday morning, our time.
The big star though in the quarter was Nasdaq which jumped by 9.8% as tech giants like Apple reached new highs.
For the S&P 500 it was its biggest quarterly rally since the final three months of 2015, with buoyant technology stocks leading the way higher.
It was its its sixth straight quarter of gains. Technology stocks led the way higher, advancing by 12.4% with shares in Apple and Facebook both up 24% and 23.5% respectively.
Consumer discretionary and healthcare shares had posted gains of more than 8%.
On the other end of the spectrum, energy shares lagged, tracking a near 6% drop in US oil prices In fact the S&P 500 energy sector lost 7.2% in value over the quarter.
Since the November 8 Trump election the index has advanced nearly 14%, while the Dow is on track for its longest streak of winning quarters. In fact, the Dow has climbed nearly 4,400 points, or about 30%, over the past six quarters, marking its best six-quarter advance since 2006, according to FactSet data. The Dow fell 65.27 points, or 0.3% on Friday, to finish at 20,663.22, to be up 0.3% for the week, but down 0.7% for the month.
The S&P 500 index lost 5.34 points, or 0.2%, at 2,362.72 on Friday, up 0.8% for the week, but down less than 0.1%.
And the Nasdaq Composite eased 2.61 points, or less than 0.1%, on Friday to end at 5,911.74. The Nasdaq rose 1.4% for the week and 1.5% for March.
US bonds underperformed, with the broad Bloomberg Barclays US aggregate index posting a total return of 0.69%. But that was much better than the near 3% loss of value in the December quarter of last year.
A late slide on Friday Japan’s stock market wipe out its gains for the year. The Nikkei 225 index lost 0.8% on Friday (and nearly 2%) for the week. That weekly fall of 1.8% pushed te index down 1.1% since the start of the year for a losing quarter.
In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index rose 0.2% on Friday for its highest close since the end of 2015. The index jumped a solid 5.5% for the three months to March 31.
The Stoxx 600 is still under its April, 2015 peak and investors seem to be waiting to see the results of the French Presidential elections later this month and in May.
For the week, Chinese shares lost 1%, Eurozone shares gained 1.6% and Australian shares rose 1.9%, thanks mostly to the strength in the big banks.
Eurozone shares rose 0.6% on Friday but the US S&P 500 fell.
Despite that softish lead from the US share market, ASX 200 futures rose 7 points or 0.1% by the close early Saturday, pointing to a flat to slightly positive start for the Australian share market on this morning.
The ASX200 index lost half a per cent on Friday to be up 2.7% for March (1.9% for the week) and 3.5% for the quarter.
