A quarter that kept on giving
The market ended June like it was trying to squeeze one more good-looking photo into the camera roll. The S&P 500 rose 0.79% and the Nasdaq climbed 1.52%, capping what was apparently their best quarterly performance since 2020. Not bad for a three-month stretch that had plenty of reasons to get weird.
Why you should care
When the major indexes put together a quarter like this, it can do two things at once:
- Make investors feel a little braver about buying dips
- Raise the bar for the second half of the year, because now everybody’s asking, “Can this keep going?”
That’s the fun part of market momentum. It starts as a nice little tailwind and then turns into its own self-fulfilling optimism machine.
The big picture
A strong quarter doesn’t guarantee anything tomorrow, but it does matter. It can pull more money into equities, keep the market leadership trade alive, and make the next wobble feel more like a pause than a panic.
Big picture: after a quarter like this, the market is basically telling you it’s still in a mood — and that mood is risk-on.