Mid Year Market Updates

The first half of 2020 will go down in the books as an extraordinary time in modern history. A health pandemic has swept the globe, and the response to the pandemic has triggered a very deep recession with more people in the U.S. unemployed than at any time since the Great Depression. Markets have responded to these events with extreme volatility. After a very sharp correction in equities in the first quarter, markets staged a remarkable recovery with stocks, as measured by the S&P 500, in the second quarter to finish June year-to-date.