Market Closes First Quarter With Many Regained Highs

The market fluctuated in the short week before Easter, with just four trading days before it closed for Good Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 finished the first quarter at record closes Thursday.

While the lower reaching indexes generally climbed highe, the tech heavy Nasdaq fell for the week. The biggest moving stocks were new editions to the market: Reddit, Astera, and Truth Social. Investors took the FOMC 'no change' decision as a good sign, but awaited the PCE inflation numbers Friday for more information on whether rates at 5.25-5.5% had sucessfully combated inflation in Febuary.

Speaking of Bitcoin, Sam Bankman-Fried received a sentence of 25 years in prison for his role as founder of the FTX crypto exchange, sentenced Thursday after a jury found him guilty of losing billions of investor dollars last year.

Fed Reserve Govenor Waller spoke Wednsday night at the Economic Club of New York, saying there is "no rush to cut the policy rate." Based on the strong job figures, and PCE and CPI inflation still climbing in January, he wants to see "further progress" before the FOMC begins reducing rates. He expects Fridays PCE print to come in at a 0.3 percent increase.

The number of Americans who applied for unemployment benefits last week fell slightly to 210,000 and continued to hover at very low levels in a sign of strength for the economy. Last week there were 212,000 unemployment filings, according to government figures.

Jobless claims tend to rise steadily when the economy gets worse, but they've held this year in a narrow range of 194,000 to 225,000 - extremely low levels from a historical perspective.