April market performance: Working hard or hardly working for your returns?

And a muted performance like that really shows the dichotomies that are challenging markets and making it so hard to figure out if we’re going up or down. Regionally, the US and Europe show strength, returning 1.5 and 2.0 pct. respectively, while Asia (-1.1%) and Emerging Markets (-1.3%) are pulled down by, especially, China’s challenges with growth concerns and geopolitical confrontations.

You can see similar conflicting points in other places in the financial world. For instance, macro figures where the general question is whether there’s a need for increasing interest rates or whether they have already been raised too much. Because inflation is still roaring, while earnings, job reports and other key numbers remain strong.

Even within sectors, April performance volatility was less than we’ve seen in a while, with no sector rising more than four pct. or falling more than one. Energy was the worst performing sector, probably due to the seasonal effect of milder spring weather and the decreased need for energy to heat up homes.

The best performing sectors were materials, consumer discretionary and real estate, all climbing more than three pct. Referring to the previous discussion about interest rates and whether they should be going up or down, the fact that consumer discretionary and real estate are among the best performing sectors indicates that consumers continue to spend money. Information technology, which is always a sector in focus, also performed well (2.9%), especially helped by positive earnings from a company like Meta.

The Global bond performance index we track in this series increased with 0.5 pct. with corporates increasing slightly more than sovereigns. Like the rest of the financial market, this is mainly an expression of the insecurity in terms of whether markets should be moving one way or the other.