Research.LeutholdGroup

A late-month rally drove the S&P 500 into positive territory for April—the 1% gain pushed it to its highest monthly close in a year.

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The S&P 500 shrugged off a few bank failures and advanced 3.5% in March, ending the month above 4,100 for the first time since last July.

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The S&P 500 sank 2.6% in February, meaning that the index has pretty much gone nowhere for the last six months.

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The S&P 500 bounced 6.2% in January, recovering nearly all of its December loss.

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Santa brought the S&P 500 a lump of coal in December 2022, as the index declined 5.9%. That move reversed November’s gain (and then some).

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The mid-October market bounce extended through November. The S&P 500’s monthly gain (+5.4%) stretched both of our downside-to-median estimates by congruent amounts. Since September 30th, downside for our “New Era” (1995-to-date) weighted average widened from -5% to -17%.

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With an 8% S&P 500 advance in October, our valuation measures bounced pretty hard off the contemporary lows. The estimate for downside to the median,1957-to-date, widened from -21% to -27%; while the “New Era” estimate (1995-to-date) worsened to -12% from -5% at the beginning of October. 

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In September, the S&P 500 suffered its worst monthly loss (-9.3%) since the start of the pandemic.

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It was a rough back half of August for the S&P 500 as it shed 8% in the final two weeks, overpowering the gains captured earlier in the month. In all, the S&P 500 had a loss of 4.2% for August.

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Secular bear markets will drop far below median valuation levels. Today, if the S&P 500 sank to the 25th percentile (1957-to-date data), it would lose 41%.

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A downright awful performance quarter for the S&P 500 (-16.5%) has our downside-to-median estimates at their narrowest points since May 2020.

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A 6.6% gain in the last full week of May brought the S&P 500 right back to where it started the month. As one would expect, the flat market resulted in small changes to the components of our downside estimates, but left our weighted averages for both series unchanged from the previous month.

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The April haircut in the S&P 500 (-8.8%) combined with February and January losses brought a few of our 1995-to-date “Estimating The Downside” measures very close to their 27-year medians for the first time in recent memory. At present, downside to the median is now -16%. Based on 1957-to-date, the S&P 500’s estimated downside to the median is -30%.

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The S&P 500 clawed back some of its losses from earlier in the quarter but still declined almost 5% for the first three months of 2022—breaking a streak of seven consecutive advancing quarters.

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The S&P 500 suffered its first back-to-back monthly decline since the fall of 2020. From its month-end closing high in December to the end of February, the index has shed 8.2%. Over those two months, our downside-to-median estimates have both shrunk by a similar 7%.

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With a price decline of -5.2%, the S&P 500 suffered its worst month since March 2020. The carnage would have been much more severe (and downside estimates more rosy) had it not bounced +4.4% in the last two trading days.

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The S&P 500 closed out 2021 with a solid +4.4% monthly price gain. For the year, it clobbered all other indexes—foreign and domestic—with a +27% jump.

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Spooked by the new Covid variant and a more hawkish Fed, the S&P 500 gave up its November gains in the last few trading days of the month. Its loss of -0.8% was minimal compared to other market cap tiers.

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The S&P 500 gained 6.9% in October—it was the best month in a year. The steep rise in prices more than cancelled-out the brief dip in September. However, improving fundamentals limited the adjustments within our downside estimates.

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The S&P 500 shed 4.8% in September—its worst month since the panic of March 2020. This trimming of the numerator helped make our downside to median estimates a little less negative. In fact, these are the “best” figures we’ve seen since February.

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