The S&P 500 Index (^SPX) rose to a new record high last Friday, slightly exceeding its previous peak on Feb. 19 by 0.5%. The bull market is alive and well following the 18.9% correction from Feb. 19 through April 8. We are still targeting 6,500 on the S&P by the end of this year and 10,000 by the end of the "Roaring 2020s" decade, advises Ed Yardeni, editor of Yardeni QuickTakes.
During the correction, the stock market sold off on President Trump's Tariff Turmoil (TTT) as well as concerns that China's DeepSeek was bad news for US technology companies, especially the ones spending the most to build AI infrastructure. Both those concerns abated after April 8, and the bull market resumed. Trump started to moderate his stance on tariffs on April 9, and AI companies reiterated their commitment to spend tens of billions of dollars on AI capital investments during April's Q1 earnings season.
Also boosting the S&P 500 is the record high in S&P 500 forward earnings. It had peaked on April 4, two days after Trump announced his proposed reciprocal tariffs on America's trading partners. It briefly dipped through April 25, but has rebounded since then.
So far, the bull market looks like a normal one, with the potential to match the returns of some of the best bull markets since the mid-1960s. It's a bit hard to believe, but the main risk at this time may be a stock market meltup – i.e., a speculative bubble. That's where we were only four and a half months ago when the latest correction started.
