Wall Street has been rising for five months. S&P 500 has best first quarter since 2019 – Stock Exchange

North American stock markets ended this Thursday’s session with a mixed trend. The S&P 500 and Dow registered slight gains, while the Nasdaq gave up ground. But in March the story was different, as everyone recorded the fifth consecutive month of positive balance.

The Standard & Poor’s 500, which is the world reference index, ended up adding 0.11% to 5,254.35 points, which constituted a closing record – and during the session it marked a new historic high of 5,264.85 points.

In the quarter (tomorrow the stock exchanges will be closed to celebrate Good Friday), the S&P 500 rose 10.2% and had the best first quarter since 2019.

The industrial Dow Jones added 0.12% this Thursday, to reach 39,807.37 points, which was also a closing record. In intraday trading, it reached an all-time high, at 39,868.59 points. Between January and March it increased 5.6%, in what was the best first quarter since 2021.

For its part, the technological Nasdaq Composite ended up losing 0.12% to 18,379.46 points. In the quarter, it gained more than 9%.

In the quarter, the S&P 500 marked 22 new all-time highs. The Dow is now very close to reaching the mythical level of 40,000 points.

The good performance of technology companies, such as Nvidia (which has climbed more than 80% since the beginning of 2024), largely due to the euphoria of artificial intelligence, helped the stock market’s positive trend in these first three months of the year. Also helping was the positive performance of the energy companies, at a time when oil prices have remained on the rise.

Helping the stock market’s good momentum has also been the expectation that the Federal Reserve will start cutting interest rates soon, with 64% of investors pointing to the beginning of this cycle in June.