• For the 3rd time in 4 weeks, the US equity markets rose reaching a new intra-day record high on subsiding geopolitical concerns and positive economic data.
• The 10 year Treasury Yield increased 9 basis points following Yellen’s comments about the possibility of a rate increase months after quantitative easing ends.
• The March Federal Reserve meeting reduced QE’s pace by $10B to a rate of $55B in Treasury and Mortgage-Backed Securities purchases per month.
• The Federal Reserve left the discount rate unchanged but decided to no longer use the 6.5% unemployment rate as an explicit metric for raising the discount rate, instead relying on a wide range of data.
• For the 11th consecutive week of inflows, US equity mutual funds took in $1.8 billion for the week.
• Large-cap stocks performed in-line with small-cap stocks, while large-cap value outperformed large-cap growth stocks.
• All sectors were positive for the week, with financials and telecom services as the best performing sectors and utilities and consumer discretionary as the worst performing sectors.