September Mourn?

Hello everyone, and welcome to the September 2023 edition of the boodle blog! If you're new here, we thank you for joining us, and if you are a regular visitor- welcome back! In this blog we offer our opinion, based on our 25 year stock market history, on what is happening in the stock market, and how these events may impact you. Boodle believes that the person best qualified to manage your money is you, and we offer our 25 years of experience to help you gain the confidence to succeed financially.
So, let's take a look and see how the month of August performed, and then we'll look ahead to September and what may unfold.
According to CNBC, the DOW finished down for the month at -2%, and the S&P 500 slipped by 1.6%, while the NASDAQ closed at a 1.5% loss for the month of August. These returns, though lower, aren't really out of line in a month like August.
We continue to see a Federal Reserve that remains a bit hawkish, and an economy that remains a bit sluggish. 
The economy added 187,000 jobs for August, demonstrating a somewhat resilient albeit lackluster growth pattern. We expect to see similar numbers on jobs reporting in the final months of 2023.
Boodle continues to see headlines proclaiming the month of September to hold very little in the way of stock market gains. This may be true, but we have always anticipated measured growth and we don't look at that as a bad thing. Don't forget that the S&P 500 is up 17.61% as we go to press, and that return is a good thing. Remember, the historical annual return on the S&P 500 is about 11%, so we are currently about 60% over the historical return!
Knowing all this information allows boodle to inform our members to continue their dollar-cost-average approach by adding money to their equity mutual funds in the amounts that they have chosen for themselves. Boodle does not see a recession forming at this time, and it is our opinion that the Bull Market we entered into last year continues to have more potential upside.
If you have any questions, or you'd like to join our boodle community, feel free to reach out to us on our Contact Us page. Thank you following us, and we hope to see you back here in October as we start the countdown to the final quarter of 2023! Stay safe and enjoy your September - we'll see you soon.