Good Tuesday morning. As we start trading today, the S&P 500 is just 1.8% from a new ATH with nasdaq only 3% away. There’s a magnet in this market to ATH’s. Then, higher still. This feels very much like 2020, the plandemic year, where following a V-bottom the markets surged back to new highs…and then just kept going.

Our friends at TrendSpider are seeing the same thing (comp of 2020 to 2025). A V-shaped bottom. Should this comp continue to play out, once we get to new highs the move higher should accelerate. Once the S&P 500 got back to ATH’s in 2020 (August), it jumped another 42% over the next 15 months. 

The key to this move higher? Earnings growth. Corporate earnings (S&P 500) are coming off of 16.9% growth (Q4 2024, the best earnings growth since Q2 2021) and with 90% of S&P 500 companies reporting, Q1 earnings are posting gains of 13.8%. These are exceptionally strong quarters yet we rarely hear anyone talk about them, even as we’re still in the earl...