The S & P 500 could close at a historic high today. What changed? It was a pretty gloomy start to the year, but that has evaporated. On Jan. 4, three days into the new year, the S & P 500 closed at 4,688, down 1.7% for the very young new year. The Santa Claus Rally had failed. Now, another indicator, the "First Five Days Indicator," was about to fail, too. Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia were all lower. By the start of the next week, it all began to reverse. The First Five Days Indicator went positive. Everyone was hunkered down for a garden variety correction of a 5% to 10% decline — not even that happened. Jan. 4 was the low. Today, the S & P 500 is positive for the year, by less than 1%, but still positive, and we are knocking on the door of the old closing high of 4,796 dating from Jan. 3, 2022. What turned things around was an old-fashioned tech rally, the exact thing that everyone was ready to write off because, well, after being the Big Story of 2023, a big-cap tech rally couldn't happen again, right? Wrong. Aside from a slight lag from Apple, it is technology and communication services stocks on the leaderboard again. Big cap tech (YTD) Apple - 1.8% Alphabet + 4.0% Amazon + 1.2% Nvidia + 16.1% Meta + 7.0% Microsoft + 5.1% The rest of the market is not cooperating. Outside of tech, only defensive names that had lagged last year such as health care are positive. S & P Sectors YTD Health Care + 1.9% Consumer Staples - 0.2% Energy - 4.5% Real Estate - 4.3% Banks - 3.5% Consumer Discretionary - 2.3% What's the lesson? Tech bull Dan Ives at Wedbush was directionally right all last year. He couldn't help but take a shot at the bears: "With 2024 kicking off and the bears in typical fashion yelling fire in a crowded theater to start the year on valuation and 'recession' worries, now all Street eyes are on 4Q earnings season and initial 2024 guidance for the tech sector to gauge underlying enterprise and consumer demand," he wrote in a note to clients this week. "We believe the key narrative for 4Q earnings season is the beginning of the AI Revolution hitting the shores of the broader tech landscape being led by Nadella and Microsoft along with the Godfather of AI Jensen and Nvidia," Ives wrote, referring to the two companies' respective CEOs.
