US stocks closed out their strongest quarter in six years, even as fallout from the Iran war, wild swings in chip companies and the record-breaking SpaceX initial public offering spurred volatile trading over the past month.
Wall Street’s S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite added 14.9 per cent and 21.4 per cent, respectively, in the three months ended June 30. That marked their best runs since the same period in 2020 when markets snapped back from heavy losses in the months after the outbreak of Covid-19.
A slide in oil prices, red-hot performances by semiconductor stocks and signs of resilience across the US economy fuelled a rally for the S&P 500 since the end of March that peaked on June 2.