No news is good news. Every day that nothing terrible happens in the banking system is a good day for the stock market. That helps to explain last week's strong rally (up 3.5%) (chart). Yes, but this morning, there's bad news on the energy front as OPEC+ is cutting oil production sending oil prices higher.
![](https://www.yardeniquicktakes.com/content/images/2023/04/capture2-1.png)
That's good news for the S&P 500 Energy sector, which was actually the best performing sector last week with a 6.2% gain, though it was still down 5.6% ytd (table). For Q1, the S&P 500 rose 7.0% led by Information Technology (21.5%) and Communication Services (20.2%).
In our opinion, the decision by OPEC+ to reduce oil output was aimed at stopping the decline in oil prices rather than at boosting them significantly. Higher oil prices are likely to stimulate more US production (chart).
![](https://www.yardeniquicktakes.com/content/images/2023/04/capture3.png)
Here are Joe Feshbach’s latest thoughts on the S&P 500: