What Higher Food Prices Mean

By Nicholas Jasinski |  Tuesday, March 22 Buy the Dip. Stock indexes jumped at today's open and continued to tick higher through the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.7%, the S&P 500 added 1.1%, and the Nasdaq Composite jumped almost 2% on a good day for growth-oriented shares. That was despite a continued rise in bond yields after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's hawkish remarks yesterday. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield rose 0.06 percentage point, to 2.38%—its highest since May 2019. Today continued a volatile stretch for the market. The Nasdaq's move today was its 39th daily change of at least 1% in 2022. That’s the most in any quarter since the first quarter of 2009. The tech-heavy index is still down almost 10% since the start of the year, but it has rebounded more than 12% from its March 14 low. The S&P 500 is down 5% this year, but up 8% from its 2022 low. Buying the dip in early March appears to have worked so far. Zoom out even further and the benefit of bargain hunting after sudden declines in the market is even more clear. Tomorrow will mark the two-year anniversary of the Covid-19 selloff bottom in March 2020. Since then, the Nasdaq is up 106% and the S&P 500 has added 102%. Only nine components of the index are in the red over that period, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Consumer staples—the worst-performing sector in the S&P 500—have soared 56%. Energy shares have more than tripled since then, up 219%. Both the short-term bounce and the longer-term ones recalls Warren Buffett's counsel to investors: "Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful."

 

DJIA: +0.74% to 34,807.46 S&P 500: +1.13% to 4,511.61 Nasdaq: +1.95% to 14,108.82 The Hot Stock: Tesla +7.9% The Biggest Loser: Weyerhaeuser -2.5% Best Sector: Consumer Discretionary +2.5% Worst Sector: Energy -0.7%