Market turnarounds like this don’t happen often. Barclays strategist Venu Krishna pointed out that the S & P 500 went from near correction territory (down about 9% from its all-time peak) back to an all-time high in just 11 trading days. That’s the fastest move to record levels from a bottom of at least 9% since at least 1990, he said. “Semis, Media (i.e., Internet) and Hardware are powering the record-breaking rally as buyers pile back into AI thematic plays that weighed on the index during the ‘escalator down’ in February and March,” he wrote to clients. .SPX YTD bar SPX year to date The turnaround comes as investors increasingly price in a resolution to the U.S.-Iran war. President Donald Trump said Thursday the conflict was going “swimmingly,” adding that it ” should be ending pretty soon .” There’s just one issue: Investors appear to be getting complacent again, and it’s showing under the stock market’s surface. “Unfortunately, despite fresh highs over the past few days, breadth has begun to stall. The Equal-Weight S & P and Value Line indices are starting to struggle beneath shorter-term resistance levels,” wrote Rob Ginsberg, strategist at Wolfe Research. Indeed, the Invesco S & P 500 Equal Weight ETF (RSP) has mostly stayed in a range between $198.41 and $201.02, two Fibonacci retracement levels going back to the mid-February peak. The iShares Russell 1000 Value ETF (IWD) has also been capped at around $225 this week, failing to break above the March 2 close of $225.77. IWD 3M bar IWD 3-mo chart All that could improve Friday, though, with stocks up sharply in early trading after Iran declared the Strait of Hormuz open to commercial traffic so long as the 10-day Israel-Lebanon ceasefire holds.
