S&P 500

Market Call: The Breadth Question

May 14, 2023 2 min read paid

They are back in their saddles again. The Magnificent 8 (a.k.a., the MegaCap-8) have been leading the stock market higher again. They've regained much of the market cap share they lost during last year's bear market, especially in recent weeks. They currently account for 24.7% of the S&P 500 index and 46.5% of the S&P 500 Growth index

Ed Yardeni

The Bears' Two Favorite Charts

May 8, 2023 2 min read paid

To support their pessimistic outlook, bearish prognosticators tend to focus on two charts. The first one shows the S&P 500 versus the securities held by the Fed, which account for most of the Fed’s balance sheet (chart). They contend that the bull market in stocks from 2009 through 2021 was driven by the Fed’s various quantitative easing programs. The S&P 500 peaked at a

Ed Yardeni

Market Call: Tug of War

May 7, 2023 2 min read paid

The bulls and the bears continue their tug of war with the S&P 500 fluctuating around 4000 since last summer (chart). The index rebounded off its 50-dma on Friday. The 200-dma has been crawling higher since the start of this year. In mid-March, when the banking crisis started, the breadth of the market narrowed as evidenced by the drop in the ratio of the S&P 500

Ed Yardeni

An Upbeat Earnings Indicator

Apr 24, 2023 1 min read paid

Why has the stock market been holding up so well so far this year despite lots of pessimism about an impending recession? One possible explanation is that industry analysts are turning more optimistic on the earnings prospects of the companies they follow. We have been tracking the percent of S&P 500 companies with positive three-month percent changes in analysts' consensus forward earnings (chart). (FYI: “Forward” earnings is

Ed Yardeni

Stock Market Sentiment Most Bullish Since Start of Last Year's Bear Market

Apr 19, 2023 2 min read paid

The Bull/Bear Ratio (BBR) climbed for the fourth week to 2.11 this week—the highest reading since the January 4 week last year, just when the previous bull market ended (chart). Early last October, when the bull market bottomed, the BBR was well below 1.00 at readings similar to those at the bottom of the bear market during the Great Financial Crisis. In late October, we concluded

Ed Yardeni

Market Call

Apr 18, 2023 2 min read

We remain convinced that the S&P 500 bottomed on October 12, 2022. The S&P 500 is up 16.2% since then (table below). Every sector of the S&P 500 is up since then. Even the Financials sector is up 10.3% despite the recent banking crisis. We are still expecting to see the S&P 500 rise to 4600 by the end of

Ed Yardeni

Market Call

Apr 10, 2023 2 min read

The tug of war between the bulls and the bears has been at a standstill recently with the S&P 500 holding above both its 50-dma and 200-dma (chart). That's quite impressive considering the banking crisis that started on March 10 when SVB imploded. Some observers (including us) think that the Fed Put is back. This time the Fed is shoring up the banking system with a

Ed Yardeni

Stock Market Rally 'Don't Get No Respect'

Apr 5, 2023 1 min read

The comedian Rodney Dangerfield often lamented during his hilarious monologues , "I don't get no respect." That applies to the stock market rally since October 12. The naysayers are saying that it is a bear market rally and that the S&P 500 will soon be falling below its October 12 low. They also claim that only the MegaCap-8 stocks have participated in the rally, while

Ed Yardeni

Market Call

Apr 3, 2023 2 min read paid

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. That's good news for the S&P

Ed Yardeni

April Is Coming

Mar 30, 2023 2 min read paid

April is the second best month of the year for the stock market. From 1928 through 2022, the S&P 500 was up 1.4% on average during the month, second only to July's 1.7% average gain (chart). The S&P 500 is up 1.5% since the end of February through today (chart). That's impressive given that Silicon Valley Bank imploded on

Ed Yardeni

Bad Breadth Again

Mar 28, 2023 1 min read

The ratio of the equal-weighted to market-cap-weighted S&P 500 stock price indexes is an interesting measure of market breadth. It is available daily since 1990 (chart). Based on this limited period, we can see that the ratio tends to rise following recessions and to peak before recessions. It bottoms just before or during recessions. The same pattern seems to apply to this ratio during bull and bear markets

Ed Yardeni

MegaCap-8 Stocks Are Outperforming Again

Mar 19, 2023 1 min read paid

The MegaCap-8 stocks seem to do well during pandemics. They did so in 2020 during the Covid lockdowns. They may be doing so again during the banking crisis. Their collective market-cap share has jumped from 19.0% a few weeks ago to 23.5% on Friday (chart).

Ed Yardeni

Page 6 of 9

Market Call: The Breadth Question

The Bears' Two Favorite Charts

Market Call: Tug of War

An Upbeat Earnings Indicator

Stock Market Sentiment Most Bullish Since Start of Last Year's Bear Market

Market Call

Market Call

Stock Market Rally 'Don't Get No Respect'

Market Call

April Is Coming

Bad Breadth Again

MegaCap-8 Stocks Are Outperforming Again