Was that a case of quarter-end buying by institutions? Over the last 50 minutes of the trading session on Wednesday, the S&P 500 (SPX) took off like a rocket, surging 30 points and finishing 0.9% higher on the day and at another all-time high. But the biggest winners on the day were small-caps, with the Russell 2000 (IWM) surging 2.2% and the S&P 600 (SML) spiking 2.4%. The IWM is breaking out of a more-than two-year base and closed at its highest level since December 2021.

Stocks rallied on Thursday, extending yesterday's gains on rate-cut optimism. Turning to stocks, shares of Apple (AAPL) are down after the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit accusing the company of engineering a monopoly in the smartphone market. Bank stocks are up today as investors are optimistic that the anticipated rate cuts this year will drive more transactions. The S&P 500 is up 0.3%, the Dow is up 0.7%, the Nasdaq is up 0.2%, and the Russell 2000 is up 1.16%.

We see what we believe are some great opportunities right now in Healthcare -- and we like the sector overall. Argus Director of Research Jim Kelleher, CFA, recently completed his quarterly sector review and raised Healthcare sector to Over-Weight from Market-Weight. The healthcare environment is undergoing rapid transitions, and we now see an unfolding period of significant promise and opportunity. Our newly-favored stance is based on resumption of deferred medical procedures and significant new quality-of-life drugs and treatments. The category is broad and has underperformed the S&P 500 over the past year. The Healthcare sector ETF (XLV) is up 15% over the past year compared to a gain of 31% for the S&P 500. We see opportunity here to pick up some steady companies, with big brands and solid financials. These companies are science-focused and enhance lives. They are innovators. In our list this week, we look across several subsectors within the Healthcare sector and pull out some leaders we like. These stocks also are included in our Focus List and Model Portfolios, as noted below.

As if the stock market needed more help, now we have declining Treasury yields across the entire yield curve. Treasury yields fell consistently from October 19, 2023, until their most-recent bottom on December 27. That move certainly helped stocks rally off their October 27 low. Yields popped from 12/27/23 until 2/22/24 and stocks ignored the increase. Since their closing peaks of 4.33% a few weeks ago, both the 5- and 10-year yields have dropped to 4.1% while the 2-year has declined to 4.56% from 4.7%.