The first six months of 2019 have been a good year. I mean the stock market gains for the first six months of 2019 would be above average performance for any 12 month period. The S&P 500 is up over 17% year-to-date with the first three months being up about 13% and the second three months adding an additional 4%. International investors as measured by the Europe, Asia, Far East (EAFE) index were up almost 2.5% in the second quarter and up over 11% in the first half of 2019.
The bond market continues its long stretch of low yields. The 10 year US Treasury Bond currently yields around 2% annually. If you had left half your money in the treasury bonds and half in the S&P 500 Index, your total return for 2019 would be almost 10%. Again, not a bad annual return jammed into the first six months of the year.
Where do we go from here? The US is growing at a “healthy tortoise pace”. We are still growing at about a 2% rate which is less than half the growth rate of historic expansions. This month, the economic expansion officially became the longest expansion on record.
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