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HOLD UP

Stocks might need a breather

A 15% romp over the last six months has left key valuation metrics in pretty rarified air. Don’t be surprised if the market splutters for a bit.

Matt Phillips

10/15/24 3:05PM

Election jitters aside, it’s been a great year for stocks with the S&P 500 up over 22% in 2024. Huzzah.

Of course, the rally could run a while longer as we gallop into November, with the resolution — hopefully! — of the US presidential race.

At minimum, a clear outcome with a peaceful transfer of power could alleviate some investor uncertainty. The winner could even proffer a rationale for a further market rise, for instance, if investors equate, say, a Trump victory with an extension of the juicy corporate tax cuts he doled out when last in office.

On the other hand, the market has already moved significantly. Over the last six months, the S&P 500 is up some 15%, a frolic that’s pushed the alpha and omega of valuation metrics, the forward price-to-earnings ratio, into truly stretched territory.

As of the close of trading on Monday, the S&P was trading at a multiple of 22x next year’s projected earnings.

The market has rarely traded in such elevated territory, the only recent examples being the Covid-era stock-market boom, as traders snapped up stocks on the understanding that the stream of corporate earnings decimated by the pandemic would eventually bounce back. (They did.)

Before that, you’d have to go back to the euphoric days of the dot-com boom of the late 1990s and early aughts to find such enthusiasm for stocks.

Now it’s possible that with earnings season just getting underway, we’ll see Wall Street analysts adjust their profit forecast much higher over the coming weeks, which would make the market look less expensive than it currently does without requiring a pullback.

It also might be the case that the market is overdue for a few weeks of meandering, or, heaven forfend, a bit of a decline as some excess optimism is sloughed off by the grind through earnings season.

For the record, the last time we got this close to this kind of P/E multiple was around the start of Q2 earnings season back in July, which was accompanied by a bracing three-week market correction that saw the S&P 500 sink by about 10% on an intraday basis.

Nobody knows which way things might go.

But those who think the market enthusiasm might be a bit excessive may find it interesting to note Tuesday’s weakness in pockets of the market with the headiest stock sentiment — for instance, AI-levered semiconductors like Nvidia, Broadcom, and Applied Materials.

They’re all taking a bit of a header after the Dutch chip-equipment giant ASML seemed to spot something of an enduring soft patch for semiconductor demand outside of AI.

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Nate Becker & Matt Phillips9h

Oil drops, yields fall, and stocks rise on reports the US has sent Iran a plan to end war

Oil, stock, and bond markets flipped as investors continued to digest the latest reports on a potential wind-down of the war in Iran, with The New York Times reporting that the US has sent Iran a 15-point plan to end the conflict.

Crude oil futures dropped sharply, from around $92 a barrel to about $88.50. Yields on two-year and 10-year Treasurys dropped, and the SPDR S&P 500 ETF shot up after-hours.

From the Times:

“The United States has sent Iran a 15-point plan to end the war in the Middle East, according to two officials briefed on the diplomacy, reflecting the Trump administration’s eagerness to find an offramp from the conflict as it grapples with its economic fallout.

It was unclear how widely the plan, delivered by way of Pakistan, had been shared among Iranian officials and whether Iran was likely to accept it as a basis for negotiations. Nor was it clear whether Israel, which has been bombing Iran together with the United States, was on board with the proposal.

But the delivery of the plan showed that the administration was ramping up efforts to conclude a war, now in its fourth week, that has drawn in several other countries.”

Some individual shares had outsized reactions to the news in the postmarket session. Gold miners Freeport-McMoRan and Newmont, which have been battered since the war started, rose. Ammonia maker CF Industries — which had risen on expectations of rising prices for fertilizer products linked to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz — fell.

US natural gas producers such as APA Corporation, EOG Resources, Devon Energy, and Diamondback Energy also declined after-hours.

The Times report also said that “for now, there is no indication that the war will let up imminently.”

United States Said to Have Sent Iran a Plan to End the Middle East War

Crude oil futures dropped sharply, from around $92 a barrel to about $88.50. Yields on two-year and 10-year Treasurys dropped, and the SPDR S&P 500 ETF shot up after-hours.

From the Times:

“The United States has sent Iran a 15-point plan to end the war in the Middle East, according to two officials briefed on the diplomacy, reflecting the Trump administration’s eagerness to find an offramp from the conflict as it grapples with its economic fallout.

It was unclear how widely the plan, delivered by way of Pakistan, had been shared among Iranian officials and whether Iran was likely to accept it as a basis for negotiations. Nor was it clear whether Israel, which has been bombing Iran together with the United States, was on board with the proposal.

But the delivery of the plan showed that the administration was ramping up efforts to conclude a war, now in its fourth week, that has drawn in several other countries.”

US natural gas producers such as APA Corporation, EOG Resources, Devon Energy, and Diamondback Energy also declined after-hours.

The Times report also said that “for now, there is no indication that the war will let up imminently.”

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Stocks close lower after fluctuating as traders digest war updates

Stocks pared steeper losses on hopes of US-Iran talks, but were unable to maintain gains on reports that the US is deploying 3,000 troops to the Middle East.

Matt Phillips11h

Amid Mideast conflict, investors cling to faith in the AI build-out

Data center build-out stocks showed impressive resilience to the slump that hit big indexes Tuesday.

In fact, construction companies, server system makers, fiber-optic technology stocks, and memory makers — all cornerstones of the AI trade — were having a pretty good day, suggesting the market sees the wave of AI construction continuing, war or no war.

Optical stocks seen as crucial to efficiently transmitting the flood of information AI data centers both produce and depend on were surging. Corning, Lumentum, Coherent, and Ciena Corp. ramped.

Server rack makers HP Enterprise and Dell jumped. Construction and engineering companies like Sterling Infrastructure, MasTec, and Comfort Systems USA, which have benefited from the growth in building data centers, posted solid gains.

Hard disk drive makers Seagate Technology Holdings and Western Digital were also positive, though other memory plays such as Sandisk and Micron were in the red.

It was an impressive display of positivity on a day when the S&P 500 (SPDR S&P 500 ETF) and the Nasdaq 100 (Invesco QQQ Trust) were both fluttering between positive and negative territory for completely understandable reasons.

After all, the 82nd Airborne is heading to the Middle East, suggesting the US is considering sending troops into Iran. US crude oil is back above $90 a barrel and climbing, as the Strait of Hormuz remains essentially shut.

Additionally, the problems in the private credit market continue, with major fund managers preventing investors from withdrawing all the money they would like to. We even had a weak auction for US two-year Treasury notes — investors seemed to think the offered yield might not be sufficient to offset inflation risks stirred up by the war — that sent short-term interest rates up sharply.

But apparently it will take more than all that for investors to worry that the AI build-out may be halted, delayed, or even just trimmed back.

Nate Becker15h

Stocks get a bump on CNN report that Iran is willing to listen to proposals to end war

Stocks got a small bump midday Tuesday as CNN reported on what appeared to be a softening in Iran’s position toward ending the war in the Middle East.

The S&P 500 briefly turned green following the report, before paring some of those gains in the afternoon.

From the CNN report:

“An Iranian source told CNN on Tuesday that there had been ‘outreach’ between the United States and Tehran and that Iran is willing to listen to ‘sustainable’ proposals to end the war.

‘There has been outreach between the United States and Iran, initiated by Washington, in recent days, but nothing that has reached the level of full-on negotiations,’ the source said. ‘Messages have been received through various intermediaries to scope out whether an agreement to end the war can be reached.’”

Markets had zoomed Monday as President Trump said there had been discussions between the two nations, but they gave back some of their gains after Iran starkly denied the claim. Markets seemed to read this new reporting as a softening of Iran’s position.

Iranian source says there has been US "outreach" and Tehran "willing to listen"

“An Iranian source told CNN on Tuesday that there had been ‘outreach’ between the United States and Tehran and that Iran is willing to listen to ‘sustainable’ proposals to end the war.

‘There has been outreach between the United States and Iran, initiated by Washington, in recent days, but nothing that has reached the level of full-on negotiations,’ the source said. ‘Messages have been received through various intermediaries to scope out whether an agreement to end the war can be reached.’”

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