US stocks rallied and reached all-time highs in July, returning 2.4% for the month.

There are two key measures of inflation, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and the Federal Reserve’s (Fed) preferred measure of Core Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index (PCE).

As the global economy recovers from the pandemic with varying degrees of success, global stock and bond markets posted broad gains in the second quarter.

While meme stocks have generated supersized returns, it has done so with supersized risk as well.

US stocks cooled off to end the month up 0.7% after climbing to new highs in early May amid fears of rising inflation, maintaining strong gains of 12.6% for the year.

Despite the assumption many have that increasing tax rates would sink stocks, historically, markets have generated positive returns in the wake of tax increases.

The Covid-19 pandemic continues to be a major theme, but the focus has shifted from the number of cases and hospitalizations to the number of people being vaccinated and progress towards “normalcy”.

US stocks ended the month with strong gains of 4.4% despite a constant tug-of-war between optimism about the economic recovery and fears about rising interest rates and inflation.