April 2023 Highlights:

• Interest rates fell, but no stock market volatility
  Despite a top-5 largest single drop in 2-year yields, we saw no +/-2% days in the stock market. On average over the last 30 years, there have been 5.6 “volatile” days after a drop of 0.6% or more.
• Bond performance during recessions
  On average since 1972, Short-, Intermediate-, and Long-term investment grade bonds returned 6.4%+ during recessions, beating Money Markets (3.9%), High Yield (0.3%), and U.S. stocks (-2.1%).
• Quality stocks have underperformed over last 3 years
  The last 3 years has seen the broad S&P 500 to outperform higher-quality stocks. In periods where this happens by 1% or more, quality stocks have tended to outperform the following 3 years.