What Goes Down, Must Go Up (?)

Today’s theme music: Blood, Sweat & Tears

One of the basic rules of earthbound gravity is this: “what goes up, must come down.”  Lately it seems as though stock markets have been ruled by anti-gravity, because the opposite is more likely to be true.  In fact, that is the basis of many successful trading strategies.  In an environment where “buy the dip” is perceived to be an almost foolproof strategy, the implicit assumption is that “what goes down, must go up.”

Market psychology, at least among the sectors most affected by the ever-increasing billions of dollars spent on AI-related technology, is about as ebullient as I can remember.  This was certainly a topic of conversation, if not the consensus, among my fellow attendees at this year’s Options Industry Conference.  As we noted on Wednesday, there was a bit of a generational schism when it came to market attitudes:

Folks who’ve been through the global financial crisis (GFC) or the internet bubble lead with questions or comments that express their nervousness that we are at risk of repeating those mistakes.  The huge rally is the type we’ve historically seen only after market bottoms that were brought about by major changes in fiscal or monetary policy.  This one is occurring without fresh fiscal stimulus, amidst higher yields and lower expectations for rate cuts, and of course higher oil.  It is also leaving consumer stocks behind, which raises questions about the sustainability of economic growth.

Here’s a thing about the “generation gap”, though: if you’re a portfolio manager at risk of underperformance, your age doesn’t matter.   You can’t bear the risk of missing your benchmark by a wide margin or appearing in the lowest quartile of your peers.  That means that you have to acquire and maintain exposure to the stocks and sectors that are driving index performance, whether by buying the shares themselves or through the use of “FOMO insurance,” meaning call options on the relevant stocks, ETFs, or indices.  No matter how old and/or nervous you might be, you have to hold your nose and dive in, no matter what.

As we also noted, a string of solid earnings reports has been a key, valuable catalyst for the recent rally.  There is no shortage of evidence that EPS growth exceeded already-lofty estimates, and that guidance was generally positive – at least among the companies in the sectors with the heaviest weights in market-capitalization-weighted indices.  One fly in the ointment might be the fact that the S&P 500 rose about 10% in a period when forward earnings guidance increased by about 4%.  It implies that equity market valuations have outpaced their underlying expectations, but that seems like a quibble right now.

Several market participants have concerns about narrow breadth in this market advance, and it is impossible to ignore them.  Note the relative 6-month performances of the Nasdaq 100 (NDX) and S&P 500 (SPX) versus the Equal-Weighted S&P 500 (SPW).  In the period ending in February, we saw SPW outperform as investors sought value in underappreciated stocks and sectors.  The three indices fell in relative tandem in March as all markets reacted to the hostilities in the Persian Gulf, but tech stocks regained the lead in force as we recovered in April and May.  This graph doesn’t show the woeful performance in consumer-related and other typically defensive sectors, but that is part of the explanation for SPW’s ho-hum rebound.

6-Months, SPW (red/green candles), SPX (blue line), NDX (purple line)

Source: Interactive Brokers, past performance is not indicative of future returns.

As I continued to write this morning’s piece, another paradigm came to mind.  I didn’t have a chance to enjoy the hotel pool while attending this week’s conference in Florida, but I did look longingly at the other guests who did.  Some kids were attempting to submerge an inflatable toy, but it kept popping up to, and sometimes through, the surface.  I’m not sure that anyone is explicitly trying to push markets lower, but tech stocks, and thus the broad market, act just like that surging beach ball every time they drop.