Things are looking pretty good right about now. The 9.2% return in the S&P 500 last month marked its best July since the Great Depression.
Jurrien Timmer of Fidelity Investments noted recently that 88% of all stocks in the index are currently sitting pretty above their 50-day moving average. “If this rally continues much further than it has so far, on a historical basis it will be hard to conclude that this is not a new bull market,” he wrote.
“Strategists and economists should have a healthy dose of humility right now. The market was pricing in a recession, but all these economic reports came out that said, ‘not so fast. Maybe there is a soft-landing potential,'” said Keith Lerner co-chief investment officer at Truist. “Now the market is pricing in optimism that we’re going to get through this. It’s in ‘party on’ mode.”
Then again, August tends to be a strange month for markets. People are on vacation, and low trading volume often leads to more volatility. September, meanwhile, is on average the weakest month of the year for markets. This could easily just be a bear market bounce. A little upward blip before another fall.
“We view this as a bear market rally,” wrote Bank of America analysts in a note on Tuesday, adding that they’re pretty common and occur 1.5 times, on average, during bear markets.
Morgan Stanley Wealth Management’s Lisa Shalett lays it out like this: “With another 75-basis-point hike in the fed funds rate, inflation metrics rolling over and recession indicators flashing red, both stocks and bonds have rallied on the prospect of a policy pivot. Mission accomplished? Not!”
Interest rate hikes aren’t ending anytime soon
Fed officials say there’s still a long way to go.
San Francisco Federal Reserve president Mary Daly told CNN’s Julia Chatterley on Thursday that raising interest rates by either half or three quarters of a percentage point in September would be a “reasonable” way to bring inflation down.
Daly doesn’t see the Fed easing interest rate hikes anytime soon. She predicts they’ll continue into at least 2023, but says that’s ultimately a good thing — even if Wall Street investors don’t agree.
“There is a lack of understanding in the markets, but consumers seem to understand,” she said. “They depend on the Fed to not introduce unnecessary volatility. The worst thing you can have as a business or a consumer is to have rates go rapidly up and then come down. … It just causes a lot of caution and uncertainty.”
A raise and hold strategy has historically paid off for the Fed, she said. The central bank is actively trying to warn against the idea of a “large hump shaped rate path, where we’ll ratchet up really rapidly this year and then cut aggressively next year.”
Still, the Federal Reserve must walk a tightrope between triggering a recession and raising interest rates, and fears of a severe economic downturn have been growing in recent months. Daly doesn’t see that happening.
“When we look at the data instead of the, you know, the worst case scenarios, I feel really relieved,” she said.
Something’s weird in the US housing market
Something strange is going on in the housing market.
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