Like stuck card players trying to win it all back in one hand, equity bulls are dialing up risk appetites at the tail-end of a brutal year.
Active stock managers are adding to positions. Option markets show a trend toward hedging, a sign professional traders are dipping back into equities. Beyond institutional circles, demand for meme stocks springs eternal, with chat-room favorites like AMC Entertainment posting big days.
Fueling the momentum, as usual, is speculation about a policy shift at the Federal Reserve -- hopes that took lumps Friday when US hiring and wage growth rose past forecasts. While changes in market leadership may portend a sturdier future for a rally that has lifted the S&P 500 14% since October, it remains hard to distinguish the latest bull run from those that fell apart earlier this year.
“You’ve just got a tough market in terms of folks hoping for signs of some reprieve, but realizing that conditions are still relatively tough,” said Lisa Erickson, senior vice president and head of public markets group at US Bank Wealth Management. “We are more skeptical that this rally is durable regardless of which sector or which style like value or growth is leading it.”
The problem for bulls is that the latest revival of risk appetites is a near-perfect rerun of the situation in early August, when active managers and hedge funds dialed up exposure and meme stocks in some cases doubled and tripled. That episode ended in disaster for bulls, with the S&P 500 plummeting more than 15% over eight weeks. Plenty of pundits see the potential for the same fate this time.
In the latest go-round, equity faithful have been quick to latch on to Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s comments on a possible downshift in the pace of tightening at next month’s meeting, driving the S&P 500 to a 3% rally on Wednesday. That session overwhelmed losses in each of the other four days and kept stocks in green for a second straight week.
More than $10 trillion has been added to equity values as stocks bounced from their bear-market lows in October. Along the way, familiar signs surfaced showing money managers who previously cut equity holdings to the bone are warming up to the market.
In a poll by the National Association of Active Investment Managers (NAAIM), equity exposure fell in September to the lowest level since the 2020 pandemic crash. It has since jumped and now hovers near a four-month high.
In options, demand for hedging is back -- seen as a bullish signal considering nobody needed protection when they barely owned any stock. After dipping to a nine-year low in November, S&P 500 skew -- which gauges demand for insurance by comparing the relative cost of three-month puts versus calls -- has climbed in three of the past four weeks, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
“This may reflect increased hedging activity,” Christopher Jacobson, a strategist at Susquehanna Financial Group, wrote in a note this week. “It could be a constructive sign, suggesting that more investors are adding to positions and as a result incrementally ramping up the demand.”