Is this the beginning of the “Roaring 2020s”?
The numbers certainly suggest it could be.
The S&P 500 is up 32% since it bottomed in early October 2022. The index is up 24% year to date and has been on fire since the beginning of November, climbing 13% since October 31. In fact, it’s now approaching the record closing high of 4,796 it set on January 3, 2022.
And those gains are not just due to the so-called “Magnificent Seven” stocks, either.
To be sure, those seven tech giants – Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOGL), Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA), Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) and Meta Platforms (Nasdaq: META) – are up substantially more than the rest of the market.
But if you look at the entire S&P 500 Index for 2023 – as represented by the Finviz graphic below – you’ll see there’s plenty of other green on the screen. (For each company, the size of the rectangle reflects its market cap size and the color indicates how much its stock is up or down for the year.)
In addition to technology stocks, financial and communications stocks have also done very well this year. Plus, consumer cyclical and industrial stocks have thrived with economic growth.
Healthcare has been a mixed bag, as companies that flourished during the height of the pandemic have stagnated a bit as the COVID-19 threat has diminished.
The biggest outliers this year have been energy and defensive stocks.
A glut of oil production around the globe – led by the U.S., which is now producing more oil every day than both Russia and Saudi Arabia combined – has pushed the price of oil down and the stocks of energy companies with it.
And of course, defensive sectors, like utilities and consumer defensive, tend to fall in bull markets and thrive in bear markets.
Will It Last?
But overall, the market is way up. So the question now is can this bull market last?
Well, the mania surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) has been a huge driver for the market this year. That’s evidenced in the astronomical gains of the Magnificent Seven, of course, but the craze has also helped to push the broader market higher – because investors have concluded that AI will benefit most industries eventually.
In addition, inflation is rapidly decelerating… the Federal Reserve looks like it’s done raising rates… and corporate earnings are growing at a healthy pace.
Those factors have prompted equity research firms to raise their targets for the S&P 500 for the end of 2024. UBS and Bank of America recently raised their targets, and Goldman Sachs this week pushed its target for the index to 5,100 (the S&P is currently around 4,770).
And last week Ed Yardeni, one of the greatest market researchers of all time, put out a note predicting the S&P will hit 6,000 in 2025, a gain of 26% from today’s level.
“We are seeing more reasons to believe in our Roaring 2020s scenario,” Yardeni wrote in a note last week.
He may be proved right. But I would argue that we need other new technologies – in addition to AI – to emerge to keep this bull market roaring through 2030.
And in fact, they already are.
Focus on These Megatrends
In the January Forecast Issue of The Oxford Communiqué, Alexander Green and I identify eight megatrends that we expect will offer investors significant upside over the remainder of this decade and well into the next.
These technological innovations range from AI to renewable energy and include a few trends you might not expect.
Smart investors will want to invest in the companies that use or produce these technologies now, before they explode. Just imagine you invested in AI hardware manufacturer Nvidia five years ago – a $1,000 investment then would be worth more than $15,000 today.
Those are the kinds of gains we expect to see from these eight megatrends.
If you’re interested in capitalizing on these megatrends, go here for more information.
Major technological innovations eventually benefit everyone in society. Think of the railroads, the assembly line and the internet – and how they’ve lifted our overall standard of living. But the biggest gains often go to those who are there at the start – think of Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford and Bill Gates.
Investing in tomorrow’s technologies today is the best way to ensure you’re on the winning side of that timeline.