Valuation

US MARKET CALL: MTM & Chips' Profit Margin Distorting S&P 500 Earnings, But FEMO Lives On!

Jul 25, 2026 6 min read paid

I. Stocks Stop the music! S&P 500 earnings per share (EPS) have been significantly distorted by huge capital gains on investments by Alphabet and Amazon and a tax-related gain from Meta. Because GAAP accounting rules force companies to record unrealized equity gains and losses directly on the income statement, a small group of tech and venture-heavy mega-caps can create significant noise in the S&

Ed Yardeni
Joe Abbott
Toby Hearst

CONSUMER STAPLES: High P/E With Low Earnings Growth

May 31, 2026 4 min read paid

We recommend an underweight position in the S&P 500 Consumer Staples sector. At first glance, the sector looks fine. Its stock price index is near a record high (chart). Consumer Staples could turn out to be a haven if AI exuberance is fueling a tech bubble that bursts. On the other hand, Consumer Staples is up 6.5% ytd, ranking 7th among the 11 S&P 500

Ed Yardeni
Toby Hearst

Leaders, Laggards & Breadth In The Current Bull Market

May 18, 2026 3 min read

The current bull market didn't start on March 31, 2026. Yet many commentators have noted that the bull market is at risk because it has been so narrow since then. The bull market actually started on October 12, 2022. Since then, most market segments have delivered solid double-digit gains. The problem is that several large-cap technology companies have delivered triple-digit gains, thereby making the double-

Ed Yardeni

MARKET CALL: Devil-May-Care

Apr 26, 2026 4 min read paid

In the autumn of 1956, Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. Britain, France, and Israel invaded. The canal closed for five months. Two-thirds of Western Europe's oil moved through it, and the price of crude doubled in dollar terms before the year was out. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell about 10% from its July high to its October low. Tankers were forced

Ed Yardeni
Toby Hearst

MARKET CALL: Animal Spirits Are Back

Apr 19, 2026 4 min read paid

When Kaiser Wilhelm II's Germany and Tsar Nicholas II's Russia squared off in the summer of 1914, the London Stock Exchange closed for five months. The New York Stock Exchange shut for four months. Investors assumed a continental war would be a calamity. World War I was a calamity for sure. However, by 1915, the NYSE had reopened, and the DJIA more than doubled by late

Ed Yardeni
Toby Hearst

MARKET CALL: The Tug Of War Between P/E And E

Apr 5, 2026 5 min read paid

Last Monday saw the S&P 500 down 9.1% from its January 27 high, which we believe marks the trough of the latest pullback, for now. That was our call on Tuesday. The next two days could make or break our call. Today, President Donald Trump issued a final, profanely worded ultimatum, setting a firm deadline for what he is calling "Power Plant Day." He specified

Ed Yardeni
Toby Hearst

MARKET CALL: The War Is Getting Foggier

Mar 14, 2026 3 min read

Why has the stock market held up so well since the start of the war? The S&P 500 is down only 4.96% from its record high on January 27 and 3.59% since the start of the war on February 28 (chart). It fell to its 200-day moving average on Friday and held it. The obvious explanation is that the market is discounting a short war.

Ed Yardeni

MARKET CALL: A Loopy Stock Market

Feb 22, 2026 4 min read paid

The equal-weight S&P 500 has been rising to record highs since the beginning of the year, while the market-weight S&P 500 has been literally loopy just below 7000 over the same period (chart). This has been mostly attributable to the stock market's rotation in the type of outperforming stocks, from high-tech to low-tech industries. Previously, the former were supercharged by

Ed Yardeni

The Great Valuation Rotation Of The Roaring 2020s

Feb 17, 2026 4 min read paid

For most of the time since the pandemic, large-cap stocks have outperformed their smaller counterparts in the US stock market. That is, the LargeCap S&P 500 index has outperformed the MidCap S&P 400 and SmallCap S&P 600, collectively the “SMidCaps.” That started to change late last year as investors increasingly concluded that the former's earnings outlook had become riskier and its

Ed Yardeni

Will SMidCaps Outperform In 2026?

Jan 6, 2026 3 min read paid

Will the S&P 400 MidCaps and the S&P 600 SmallCaps (i.e., SMidCaps) finally outperform the S&P 500 LargeCaps this year? Maybe. They’re overdue to do so. However, we think investors would be better off focusing on select SMidCaps sectors rather than the broad indexes. We would overweight the same SMidCap sectors as we recommend overweighting in the S&P 500: Financials,

Ed Yardeni

MARKET CALL: 1920s And 2020s Not The Only Roaring Decades

Jan 2, 2026 4 min read

Goldman Sachs has been pushing the view that the stock market's return over the next 10 years is likely to be very low, at only around 3% per year. We disagree. Admittedly, there's logic to that forecast: The forward P/E of the S&P 500 is currently historically high at 21.8 (chart). That suggests that it's likely to fall in the

Ed Yardeni

Home Stretch For The Holidays

Nov 11, 2025 3 min read paid

The S&P 500 closed at 5881.63 at the end of last year. It is up 16.2% since then to 6846.61 today (chart). That beats the average 10.4% ytd gain at this point in the year over the past 10 years. The average annual increase over the past 10 years was 12.3%. If this turns out to be an average year, then the S&

Ed Yardeni

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