Published on 1 Jul 2022 on Zacks via Yahoo Finance
After a poor end to the first half of the year in more than five decades, investors are wary about entering the markets as all three major indexes recorded second consecutive quarterly declines. 2022 commenced with a rise in COVID-19 cases due to the Omicron variant. Thereafter, the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, 40-year high inflation and aggressive monetary policy stance by the central banks globally have stoked the fears of recession within the next six-nine months.These factors led to declines in all the 11 major S&P 500 sectors except for energy. The Financial Services sector, which fell 18.8%, is among the five worst-performing sectors. Amid such a dismal scenario, investors must look out for stocks that are fundamentally well placed and will continue to thrive once the current headwinds cool off. Today we will be discussing one of the largest banks in the United States — Bank of America BAC.The stock has lost 30% in the first half of 2022, which is more than the S&P 500’s decline of 20.3% and other major banks like JPMorgan’s JPM 28.9% and Citigroup’s C 23.8%. In fact, this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock touched a 52-week low of $30.64 in the last day’s trading. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.Year-to-Date Price Performance
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