John Hancock: Weekly Market Recap Week Ended November 24th

Growth’s big YTD lead

With a little over a month left in 2023, U.S. growth stocks maintained a big performance gap over their value style counterparts—a sharp reversal from 2022, when value outpaced growth. Through Friday, a U.S. large-cap growth index was up 36.7% year to date on a total return basis; the return for its value-style counterpart was 4.8%

Earnings scorecard

With nearly all third-quarter results in as of Friday, companies in the S&P 500 are expected to post an average earnings gain of 4.3% over the same quarter a year earlier, according to the latest data from FactSet. That result would mark the first quarter of earnings growth since the third quarter of 2022.

Fed’s rate outlook

Tuesday’s release of minutes from the most recent U.S. Federal Reserve policy meeting showed that Fed officials gave no indications that they were inclined to begin cutting interest rates anytime soon. Members agreed that Fed policies need to stay “restrictive” until data shows a convincing trend that inflation will return to the central bank’s 2% target.

GDP ahead

With the next monthly jobs report not scheduled to come out until December 8, Wednesday’s update on U.S. GDP growth is likely to be the most closely watched economic report of the new week. It will be the second estimate of third-quarter growth; the initial estimate released in late October put growth at a stronger-than-expected annual rate of 4.9%, up from a 2.1% figure in this year’s second quarter.

Source: https://www.jhinvestments.com/weekly-market-recap