I’ve never fought in a boxing match, but I would have to assume that they are quite brutal. These fighters train for months at a time in order to take center stage for about 30 minutes and beat each other up.
What would seemingly be very frustrating would be when the fight ends in a draw. All that training and then those 12 rounds of brutal combat for both fighters’ hands to be raised in the middle of the ring!
Throughout the course of the fight, many twists and turns occur. At one point, the fighter in the blue corner may have a stranglehold on the fight. But as the fight progresses, the fighter in the red corner may snatch the fight right from the other fighter’s grip.
Back and forth throughout the fight, blow after blow. Then the fight comes to an end and it’s just a draw! Like kissing your sister, a dang tie!
This quarter, still with one trading day remaining, feels like that draw type fight. Investors got punched in the gut during the first month but roared back with a vengeance during the middle round (February).
March seemed to be the round when the bulls and bears had exhausted themselves and exchanged pathetic blows back and forth to create a tug of war game ending in a tie.
Throughout the battle, we had anxiety run high amongst the spectators (the retail investors), given global concerns and a continuation of movement towards tighter monetary policy in the States.
As the equity markets were the main event, the undercard was probably the most interesting event forinvestors. It seemed as if yields’ moving higher was a foregone conclusion… by everyone!
The first quarter proved all those experts wrong, as rates moved down by nearly 30 basis points in the first quarter.
Too often, as spectators, we are only concerned with the outcome of that one fight or that one game. Unless that one game or fight is the last one of the season, we should be more concerned with the progress made and how that bodes for the future.
With the equity markets, we basically came out of Q1 with a draw. Despite this, I think that the resilience we saw within the markets as global concerns and weak economic data surfaced shows a lot for these markets going forward.
(All data used within The Capital Course was provided by Ned Davis Research)
