Market Commentary — April 12, 2021

Most major benchmarks hit record highs last week, with only the Russell 2000 Index of small-cap names retreating slightly. Tech names rallied, outpacing the broad market, but stayed below their February peaks.

Growth stocks outperformed value shares, narrowing the YTD performance gap, but the Russell 1000 Growth is still only up 6.7% for the year vs. 13.7% for the Russell 1000 Value.

The big news on the economic front was the Jobs Report. The Labor Department reported that employers added 916k new jobs in March, well above consensus estimates for 650k and the most since last August. The unemployment rate dropped to 6%. Clearly, a lot of those jobs are related to the reopening of the economy and restaurants with 280k of the jobs added in the leisure and hospitality industries. One surprise was jobless claims, which hit their highest level (744k) in three weeks.

On the inflation front, producer prices (PPI) rose by 1% in March, pushing the YOY increase to 4.2%. The supply chain remains under pressure with delays at ports and a global semiconductor shortage.

The Bitcoin ETF race added another player with Krypto in Investment Advisors filing for Bitcoin ETF #8 on Friday, adding to, in order by filing date: #1. Wilshire Phoenix #2. Vaneck, #3. Valkyrie, #4. Stone Ridge/NYDIG, #5. Wisdomtree, #6. First Trust/SkyBridge, and #7. Fidelity.

Interestingly, Bitwise has not re-filed since their denial/withdrawal in January of 2020. What’s up with that Matt Hougan?

Have a great week everyone! Spring is in the air!

Jane Edmondson
CEO and Co-Founder

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EQM Indexes LLC is a woman-owned firm dedicated to creating and supporting innovative indexes that track growth industries and emerging investment themes. Co-founded by Jane Edmondson, a former Institutional Portfolio Manager with more than 25 years in the investment industry.

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