Magnificent 7 Miss Out, 2 Cybersecurity Stocks Stand Firm, Retailers Lag In Volatile August: Here Are The Top S&P 500 Gainers And Losers

August saw the equity market make good the losses it experienced post its mid-July peak, with earnings and benign data helping the fightback. With August in the rearview mirror, here’s a look at the leaders and laggards among the S&P 500 Index, a broader gauge of market performance.

3-Part Trend: The month’s trading could be characterized as a tale of three trends. Stocks extended the weakness into August, with the S&P 500 bottoming on Aug. 5, coinciding with the collapse of the global equity markets. The unwinding of the yen carry trades due to the yen’s strength perked up risk aversion, sending Japanese stocks into a tailspin, and the reverberations became evident elsewhere.

The S&P 500 Index fell 4.3% intraday on Aug. 5, which happened to be a Monday. The collapse was promptly dubbed Black Monday 2.0 to differentiate it from the Black Monday crash of Oct. 1987. The CBOE Volatility Index, commonly called VIX, more than doubled to 65.73 intraday before pulling back.

On a positive note, the S&P 500 closed off the lows of the day and was down a more modest 3% by the close.

The market saw a steady recovery from the low through Aug. 22, thanks to a slew of catalysts that reinforced expectations that the Federal Open Market Committee would begin cutting rates at its September meeting.

The strong and rapid recovery pushed traders on the defensive, and the market has been moving sideways since then.

For August, the S&P 500 Index gained 2.28%, ending the month at 5,648.40, off its record closing high of 5,667.20 hit on July 16.