The S&P 500 notched another record Monday as the U.S. stock market celebrated the second anniversary of the bull market, a remarkable recovery over the last two years as stock prices soared despite recession fears and high interest rates.
The Charging Bull Statue in New York's financial district.
The S&P rose about 0.8% to a new intraday all-time high of 5,865, notching its third record in the last four trading sessions as optimism abounds on Wall Street at the start of third-quarter earnings season.
It’s a remarkable 68% gain from the leading U.S. index’s Oct 13, 2022 bottom of 3,492, a more than 70% gain when accounting for reinvested dividends.
The monster bounce back came as corporate earnings growth proved resilient despite high rates and inflation moderated from its four-decade high, eroding fears of an extended U.S. downturn, and notably as investors piled into stocks poised to benefit the most from the generative artificial intelligence craze.
“The bull charged and at times stomped its hooves on the ground in reaction to the monetary policy, earnings expectations, and economic outlooks waved in front of it, yet the bull trampled even our heady expectations,” remarked Yardeni Research founder Ed Yardeni in a Sunday note to clients.
AI chip architect Nvidia is by far the best–performing stock on the S&P over the two-year bull market, returning more than 1,100% (meaning $1,000 invested in Nvidia two years ago is now worth more than $12,000). The list of other big winners during the stretch is littered with other major AI players, like Facebook parent Meta (up 370%), silicon chip peddlers Broadcom (335%) and Advanced Micro Devices (200%) and cloud computing giant Oracle (200%). Fittingly, AI king Nvidia headlined Monday’s gains, rising 3% toward what should comfortably be an all-time record close.
The S&P is just 2.3% shy of hitting 6,000, only eight months after eclipsing 5,000 for the first time. The index first topped 1,000 in 1998, 2,000 in 2014, 3,000 in 2019 and 4,000 in 2021.
The balmy two-year stretch was not a pain-free period for all equities, as blue chip stocks like Disney, Intel and Pfizer all provided negative returns and one-time S&P component Silicon Valley Bank failed in March 2023, causing investors in the regional bank to see their stakes go to zero. Goldman Sachs strategists forecast the S&P to end 2024 at 6,000 and to rise to 6,300 by next October, indicating some room to run for equities even as the index trades at its priciest ratio compared to earnings since 2000, excluding the 2020-21 period in which the COVID-19 pandemic shock temporarily evaporated profits. The S&P declined 25% between Jan. 2022 and mid-October of that year as the market digested an increasingly worrisome macroeconomic picture.