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BUSINESS
Strong quarter ends cautiously as earnings loom
NEW YORK -- Investors carried Wall Street to a remarkable second-quarter performance even though stocks' big spring rally stalled weeks ago.
The major indexes all managed to end the quarter with double-digit percentage gains. Now, whether the market regains its momentum in the July-September period or hunkers down again will depend on what companies have to say in the next few weeks -- not just about their own prospects, but the economy's as well.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 11 percent during the quarter, while the Standard & Poor's 500 index surged 15.2 percent. Both indexes logged their first quarterly gains since the third quarter of 2007. The Dow also had its best quarter since 2003 and the S&P 500 its best since 1998.
The S&P 500 index and the Nasdaq composite index are finishing the first half of 2009 in the black. The Nasdaq, heavily populated by tech stocks, rose 20 percent for its first winning quarter in a year and had its best quarter since 2003.
The quarter turned out better than most traders might have expected when the major indexes sank to 12-year lows in early March on growing despair about the recession. But the market's advance wasn't as impressive as it was in mid-June, when the major indexes hit multi-month highs. Since then, investors' uncertainty about the strength of an economic recovery has brought the Dow down 4 percent, the S&P 500 down 2.8 percent and the Nasdaq, 1.5 percent.
On Tuesday, the last day of the quarter, the Dow fell 82.38, or 1 percent, to 8,447.00; the S&P 500 fell 7.90, or 0.9 percent, to 919.33, and the Nasdaq slid 9.02, or 0.5 percent, to 1,835.04.
