Market Commentary March 2018

Investors will be happy to put February in the rear view mirror. More than the actual decline, investors will take away the stomach-churning memory of the free fall early in the month, where the S&P 500 lost nearly 11% from its late January peak to the end of the first week of February. The bigger casualty in February was investor confidence in the market’s upward course. Of course, markets occasionally need a healthy corrective. They function best when greed and fear are in healthy balance, or at least have reached an uneasy truce. By the end of 2017, fear was banished, while greed was rampant. If the price of February selling has been restoration of this balance, the trading year may be better for it.