S&P 500, Nasdaq rise for fifth month in a row
Both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite closed higher on Monday. The indices also closed higher for the month of July, making it five-straight months of gains for both. Yahoo Finance Markets Reporter Jared Blikre breaks down what drove the market action.
Video Transcript
[AUDIO LOGO]
DIANA KING HALL: Well, July was a busy month for markets. The S&P 500 closing out its fifth straight month of gains, its longest run since 2021. Jared Blikre is here with a closer look at that, the S&P 500, the NASDAQ, more.
JARED BLIKRE: Yes. And I'll tell you what, Meta is up at nine months straight. We're going to get to some of the individual names in a second. Let's take a look at the S&P 500 first, because, as you said Diane, one, two, three, four, five months, up, up, and away and accelerating to the upside here. A similar story but not exactly the same for the NASDAQ composite.
And also want to demonstrate what's been happening with the Russell. The Russell was dead money only two months ago. And it has soared back into the green, reaching, if not eclipsing, the levels we saw back in early February. But I want to get to the sector action. And you can see here, this is a year to date map of all the sectors in the S&P 500, all 11. And clearly, the outperformer is tech. That's XLK, up 43% this year. Then we have communications services and then consumer discretionary. So the mega-caps really in charge.
And I've been showing this over the last two months, things have changed. Things have broadened out. XLY, that's where Amazon is. But a host of other-- excuse me-- retail names. [? Coal ?] is in there, Nordstrom. Each of those are up 50%. So brick and mortar joining the party here. Materials, that is a big play on the US dollar, which has been going down over the last two months. That is up 14% right there with discretionary. Then you've got energy, industrials, financials, and communication services. So a really broad swath of outperformers here when we talk about the market action.
The other noticeable thing here, everything is green. So everything picked up over the last two months, kind of equalizing thing. I did mention Meta up nine months in a row. Apple, this is seven. So you take a look at what some of these individual names have done, Apple's been up every single month this year. Now, this is over the last two months. So we're not seeing the huge outperformance. And let me just put this back to a year-to-date.
In the mega-caps that we see there, Nvidia up 200%, Microsoft up 40%, Alphabet, 50%. But still, some nice gains. So it just goes to show you that even when others join the rally, some of the stalwarts also participating in this action here, guys.
