Listen, people are running out of superlatives when it comes to describing the inexorable rally in equities.
Wait, that’s not entirely true. Donald Trump isn’t running out of superlatives because his vocabulary consists entirely of superlatives.
But outside of the President, people are literally at a loss for words. “Even if you were the bullest of the bulls, this crazy rally start to the year took you off guard,” Michael Antonelli, an institutional equity sales trader and managing director at Baird told Bloomberg on Friday. “We’ve completely run out of ways to describe what’s happening. We get asked a lot, are you seeing anything different that could explain the rally? The answer is no.”
Stocks are off to their best start to a year since 2003 as faith in the “Goldilocks” narrative morphs from optimism into something that approximates religious zeal. The S&P has risen 8 out 9 trading days in 2018, blowing past several analysts year-end targets in the process.
If you needed one more piece of evidence to support the contention that “Icarus” has been “unleashed” (to quote BofAML’s Michael Hartnett), look no further than the fact that the S&P is now sitting more than 11% above its 200-day moving average, a state of affairs last seen in 2013:
What could go wrong?
Nothing. Obviously.
Because it’s not like Icarus fell into the ocean and drowned in the myth…
bull market, dude