That’s the day the S&P 500 took a dramatic 2% plunge, with recent market leaders doing considerably worse than that, right after the index had reached a high of 2400.
Despite closing a hair’s breadth above the lows–normally a bad sign–the market reversed course on Thursday and has been steadily climbing since. The prior leadership–globally-oriented secular growth areas like technology–has also reasserted itself.
My thoughts:
–generally speaking, the market is proceeding on a post-Trump rally/anti-Trump agenda course. Emphasis is on companies with global reach rather than domestic focus, and secular change beneficiaries rather than winners from potential government action that have little other appeal
–while trying to figure out whether the market is expensive or cheap in absolute terms is extremely difficult–and acting on such thoughts is to be avoided whenever possible–the valuation of the S&P in general looks stretched to me. Tech especially so. This is especially true if corporate tax reform ends up being a non-starter. My best guess is that the market flattens out rather than goes down. But as I wrote a second or two ago absolute direction predictions are fraught with peril
–tech is up by 17.0% this year through last Friday, in a market that’s up 6.4%. Over the past 12 months, tech is up by 35.2% vs. a gain of 16.8% for the S&P. Rotation into second-line names appears to me to be under way, suggesting I’m not alone in my valuation concerns
–currency movements are important to note: the € is up by about 10% this year against the $, other major currencies by about half that amount. Why this is happening is less important, I think, than that it is–because it implies $-oriented investors will continue to favor global names
–the next move? I think it will eventually be back into Trump-motivated issues. For right now, though, it’s probably more important to identify and eliminate faltering tech names among our holdings (on the argument that if they can’t perform in the current environment, when will they?). My biggest worry is that “eventually” may be a long time in coming.