Research.LeutholdGroup

There’s a strong argument that the internal peak of the bull market is behind us. The Equal-Weighted S&P 1500—featured prominently in this section this month—is still down 12% from its November 25th bull market peak.

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The sheer size of the equity market relative to U.S. GDP (roughly a two-to-one ratio) means that market swings—which always influence the economy—have taken on a more prominent role. 

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It turns out the “front-running” prophesied by bullish economic analysts has occurred in Prices, not New Orders. Such a backdrop is usually challenging for stocks. 

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There have been wild gyrations in the S&P 500 Cyclical/Defensive Ratio over the last year against a backdrop of historically high Cyclical valuation premiums. In other words, there’s no recession bet priced into the equity segments that should most reflect it.

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The NYSE Daily Advance/Decline Line hit a new high in May, which has traditionally been an “all-clear” for the stock market on a three- to six-month basis. Yet, the A/D Line’s strength doesn’t square with the rebound’s resumption of Large Cap leadership.

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We’re trying to draw obvious parallels between today’s bifurcated stock market and the late 1990s. But here, we do it solely to illustrate that the NYSE Daily Advance/Decline Line may be giving a too-rosy picture to market technicians—and the vastly greater number of closeted technicians. 

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Since the low in Oct. 2022, SPX is up 66%—typical for a bull market of this age; however, the broad-market stampede distinguishing a youthful bull never happened. Yet, those four years of futility were not in vain—the valuation profile for the average stock has improved markedly.

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We’re intrigued that Industrials was the first broad sector to eclipse its pre-correction high, and is still the only one to accomplished that. A market technician might argue that the divergent strength in such an economically sensitive segment is a bullish portent for the economy and stock market—but history doesn’t support that view.

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Stock-market dip buyers have again been handsomely rewarded, although it’s important to distinguish between words and action. Few (if any) being vocally bullish at April’s lows had told anyone to sell beforehand, and it’s likely their reward was more reputational than monetary.

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Markets are no longer hanging on every Fed whisper — fiscal policy has muscled into the spotlight. As investors navigate this new landscape, the old game of decoding central bank signals is giving way to something much clearer

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Out of necessity, bear market rallies and the first leg of a new advance look nearly identical; if they didn’t, the game would be too easy. However, the action (or lack of it) within the most economically sensitive groups would seem to support our bearish take. 

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If the full extent of the market decline, which began in March, bottomed on April 8th, it will stand as the deepest loss in our register of severe corrections (-12% to -19%) dating back to 1959. It is notable that, other than 1999, in all prior cases the SPX bottomed with a Normalized P/E ratio below its median of 19.4x; on April 8th, that figure (25.4x) still ranked in bubble territory.

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A Zweig Breadth Thrust (triggered in late April), has historically been a boost for the seasonal market doldrums common from May through October, with stock gains much higher during that period than in the absence of a ZBT. Maybe that explains why the “Sell In May” phenomenon hasn’t received the usual attention this year.

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To date, hard data points have held up very well in the face of Tariff Tantrum 2.0. Yet, strong retail sales in March could have been due to tariff front-running with added staffing propping up the latest employment numbers. For now, we think “soft” data, especially surveys of purchasing managers better capture the potential economic impact of the tariffs.

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We recently finished a study featuring 30 versions a favorite forecasting “toy”—the Treasury yield curve. In this expanded report we unearthed value in several variants we didn’t test in the original 2023 study. In particular, higher forecast correlations were produced when using yields on 2-yr. and 3-yr. Treasury notes in lieu of the 10-yr. Treasury yield.

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While the stock market has reversed about half of its February–April decline, the risk of a self-fulfilling confidence collapse remains elevated. In April, the Conference Board’s Consumer Expectations Index dropped to a level that’s been observed only once outside of a recession (mid-2011).

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We were overly attuned to the short-term action in February that we missed a monumental event at the end of that month: A close in gold above the previous, inflation-adjusted all-time high recorded in January 1980. It took 45 years, but even those with the worst-imaginable entry point have now seen gold fully realize its promise as an inflation hedge.

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The outperformance of foreign stocks in 2025 is not a new story, but it’s now been formally “validated” by new signals from a pair of models we use for timing potential allocation changes. 

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The market decline will almost certainly be accompanied by a recession. For months we’ve maintained that the wealth effect had become the main support of an expansion whose list of beneficiaries had been narrowing like that of stock breadth and leadership. The administration’s draconian tariffs will deserve some blame, but it’s not partisan to underscore that the expansion was on precarious footing long before the Tariff Tantrum.

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The stock market losses in 2025 have materialized so rapidly that many investors might feel trapped, hoping for a bounce that provides better exit prices. The challenge may be that an imminent bounce and the “new narrative” to support it will seem so compelling that the urge to exit may dissipate.

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