The cyclical recovery trade remains in place, investors continue propping traditional cyclicals such as industrials and financials up. Growth sectors on the other hand faced headwinds as the risk of interest rate hike looms. Over the month, the cyclical heavy Dow Jones gained 1.93%, the S&P 500 was only slightly up by 0.55%, while the tech heavy NASDAQ was down 1.53%.

Weekly Insight June 11

Weekly Insight June 4

Weekly Insight May 28

Fixed income markets went up across the board as yield pressure was temporarily off the table. Long end yields retreated, investment grades were able to recoup some of the earlier losses, global high yields continued to post positive returns. Over the month, Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate, US Investment Grades, Global High Yields, and Emerging Markets US Dollar Bonds gained 1.26%, 1.11%, 1.90%, and 1.33% respectively.

The Japanese equity market was one of the few major markets that ended the month in red. Driven by the weak fundamentals and steadily worsening pandemic situation, market sentiment deteriorated and the indices faltered at the latter half of the month. Nikkei 225 was down 1.25% (-0.07% in US$ terms), while the TOPIX index lost -1.69% (-2.85% in US$ terms).

The epidemic situation in the emerging market countries is severe, and vaccination rollout remains sluggish. While emerging Markets managed to bounce back from the poor month of performance back in March, it still lagged behind global markets as existing problems continue to plague the market. Over the month of April, the MSCI emerging markets index gained 2.37%.