John Hancock: Weekly Market Recap Week Ended April 10th

Climbing back

Although the stock market’s recent gains have gone a long way to recover ground lost amid the coronavirus pandemic, the major indexes remained far short of a full comeback. As of Thursday’s close, the S&P 500 was up nearly 25% from a recent low on March 23, but it was almost 18% below its record high set about a month earlier.

Fed’s latest backstop

The U.S. Federal Reserve took another step aimed at stabilizing the economy, extending $2.3 trillion in financing to small and midsize businesses as well as state and municipal governments. The Fed on Thursday also expanded previously announced corporate lending programs to include classes of higher-risk debt that had been excluded from an earlier initiative.

Unemployment upheaval

There was no interruption in the surge of unemployment claims filed by U.S. workers, with a total 6.6 million benefits applications filed in the latest week―in addition to more than 10.0 million total claims over the previous two weeks. At the end of March, a record 7.5 million Americans were receiving unemployment benefits.

Small-cap surge

Small-cap stocks had a huge week, outpacing large-cap indexes by wide margins. A small-cap benchmark, the Russell 2000 Index, jumped nearly 19%. Since a recent low on March 18, the index was up 26%.

Source: https://wmr.jhinvestments.com/