Market Call: Young Bull

We have some good news and some bad news for the bulls. The good news is that the S&P 500 is up 20.0% since October 12, which is widely viewed as the definition of a bull market (table). The bad news is that a picture of a bull is featured in the latest Barron's cover story titled, "Don't Fear the Bull Market. Why Stocks Are Headed Higher" by Jacob Sonenshine. Cover stories can be jinxes. If so, we'll take some of the blame since we are quoted in the story: "The notion that we're in a bull market has become more compelling and harder to argue against," says Yardeni Research's Ed Yardeni.

In any event, we would like to see the S&P 500's rally continue to broaden. It was doing so until the banking crisis started in early March causing Financials to take a dive while the MegaCap-8 led the way higher in a melt-up fashion fueled by excitement over AI. We don't have a problem with that since we've been predicting that technological innovation will be the defining trend of the Roaring 2020s. Meanwhile, Financials rebounded nicely in recent days as the weekly commercial banking data continue to show that the banking crisis has been contained (chart).