What Is the Month of May Known For?

The month of May is named after the Greek goddess Maia who looks after plants. The month is also known for love and success. The flower that represents May is the lily-of-the-valley and is beautiful with blossoms that resemble a bell. May is a busy month filled with lots of fun dates. Cinco de Mayo, is always a fun day to celebrate and allows us an excuse to continue
enjoying our daily Happy Hour!

On the serious side, May is a very special month because of our beloved Mother’s Day, which is celebrated every year on the second Sunday of the month. This year’s Mother’s Day was extra special, bringing family together during these rough times.

May has been good for the stock market. Especially this past week where stocks surged, climbing to levels not seen since early March. Stock market optimism stems from positive economic activity that is gathering steam, coupled with hopes that our government may offer additional stimulus to bolster the recovery, as well as the anticipated opening of many businesses. This past week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose over 2 1/2%, its first close above 25,000 since the beginning of March.

Further thought by analysts suggest the market’s real strength is based on the latest unemployment data signaling the worst of the economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic may be waning. Despite an additional two million people unemployed, announced this week, the overall increasing trend of unemployment is diminishing. Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan thinks the economy is coming “out of the hole.” “You are seeing us come out of the depths of where we were in April and that’s really good news!”

Internationally, stocks have edged higher with announcements that the European Union will be attempting to help their economies by adding stimulus.

As our economy continues to open, even marginally across America, different industries are providing assurances that their safety precautions and processes are structured and robust. Hotels are bending over backwards cleaning, sanitizing, and staggering rooms and floors attempting to make their guests and employees safer. Businesses that are currently opening are planning to take strong measures to make sure their customers and employees are safe utilizing less people in their stores, face masks, hand washing, and separation.

May is certainly a month to remember. But we have to be guarded and not overconfident. We must be diligent and remember just one month ago unemployment spiked to 14.7% while our GDP declined nearly 5% causing quite a bit of uncertainty in our economy and major declines in our stock market and personal wealth.

Jim Pearce of Personal Finance newsletter comments, “The argument for higher equity prices is that the stock market is a forward-looking device that assigns value based on expectations for future profits not past events. Among the 11 global industry sectors making up the S&P 500 index, all but three of them have experienced considerable financial damage over the past three months. With the possible exception of technology, healthcare, and utilities, most sectors will report lower earnings this year compared to last year and in some cases substantially less.”

Your management team at Woloshin Investment Management is constantly searching for investments that have solid balance sheets, consistent earnings, among other characteristics to match our client’s objectives.

Our next question, what is the month of June known for……..until next week,

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Warmest Regards,

Your friends at Woloshin Investment Management