As we expected, Friday ended with the Dow Jones average posting its highest monthly gain since October 2002, with a sizable 8.6 percent increase. Significantly, the market was doing all this in July, which is historically a pretty blah month for investors. Traders and other Wall Street bigwigs tend to take vacation during July, dampening down the trading volume.
But this July was a firecracker. This was the Dow's best July performance since 1987. It was the best July performance by the Nasdaq since 1997, and the best by the S&P 500 since 1988. The Wilshire 5000, which contains all the equities in the United States with readily available price data (it now actually contains more than 5,000 stocks), posted the best July in the history of the index, which dates back to 1975.
This July, with people desperate for a turnaround in the markets, is probably different in many respects from previous Julys. Traders are working harder these days - those fortunate enough to still have jobs. And it's easy to get too excited about these figures: Both the S&P and the Nasdaq posted higher monthly gains as recently as April. But overall, the news for July was worth getting excited about.
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