Published on 3 Aug 2022 on Zacks via Yahoo Finance
Stocks in the United States and Europe had their biggest monthly increase since November 2020 on upbeat earnings and expectations of slower Federal Reserve monetary tightening. Investors’ hope that slowing inflation and slowing growth may keep the Fed to ease plans to push up interest rates boosted equities throughout the month. Cheaper valuation after a downbeat first-half also aided equities.
The S&P 500, the Dow Jones, the Nasdaq Composite and the Russell 2000 added 8%, 5.6%, 11.4% and 9.1%, respectively in the past one month (as of Jul 29, 2022). Some earnings came in upbeat to close out the month. Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. both companies beat revenues estimates. In July, Amazon shares gained 27%, their biggest monthly rally since October 2009.
The rally in Wall Street came despite 41-year high inflation, GDP contraction for the second-straight quarter and yet another Fed rate hike worth 0.75%. Against this backdrop, below we highlight a few ETF areas that won in July.