Published on 8 Apr 2024 on Zacks via Yahoo Finance
Buy 5 S&P 500 Laggards of Q1 Likely to Gather Pace in Q2
U.S. stock markets witnessed an impressive first quarter of 2024 after an astonishing 2023. Wall Street’s bull run got an added boost this year, to the surprise of a large section of financial pandits, who indiscriminately warned of overvaluation.
In 2023, Wall Street’s benchmark the S&P 500 Index jumped 23.9%. After that, in first-quarter 2024, the S&P 500 rallied 10.2%, marking its best first-quarter performance since 2019. In the last quarter, the broad-market index recorded 22 new all-time highs. The index’s most recent all-time high of 5,264.85 was posted on Mar 28. Thereafter, the index retreated 1.1%.
Despite a dream run of the benchmark, a few S&P 500 components lagged the index to a big extent. A handful of those stocks currently carry a favorable Zacks Rank. These stocks are likely to regain momentum in the second quarter as steadily dwindling inflation, strong fundamentals of the U.S. economy and expectations of interest rate cut this year are likely to help reviving their businesses.