This Stock Market Splash Has a Disturbing Undertow
With just a handful of highfliers driving the S&P 500 into positive territory this quarter, dreams of a new bull market need a reality check.
Break out?
Photographer: Elsa/Getty Images North AmericaThe benchmark S&P 500 Index is wrapping up its second straight quarterly gain, rising 5.50% through Thursday and adding to the 7.08% surge in the final three months of 2022. This will be cheered as good news, confirming the stock market’s recovery from last year’s bear market and resiliency in the face of stubbornly high inflation, rising interest rates and bank failures. Don’t fall for it.
Underneath those topline numbers lurks a disturbing development — a very small percentage of stocks actually account for the rise. If not for a handful of highfliers such as Nvidia Corp., Meta Platforms Inc., Tesla Inc., Warner Bros Discovery Inc., and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which all chalked up gains of between 50% and 87%, the S&P 500 would be struggling. In fact, when all stocks are weighted equally, the index is actually little changed, rising less than 0.5% for the quarter. Broader measures of the stock market, such as the New York Stock Exchange Composite Index, are essentially flat.