“Ominous signs.” Marko Kolanovic sees them.

It’s been a long 18 months for bears. I’d say they’re going extinct (and if you proxy their numbers by short interest on benchmark equity ETFs they are), but the irony of the current rally is that stocks are rising so inexorably that last month’s bullish calls are this month’s bear cases.

That’s just barely an exaggeration. Even after the most recent round of price target hikes on Wall Street (which included a third increase from Goldman’s David Kostin), the average year-end S&P forecast among top-down equity strategists was below spot.

Kolanovic and JPMorgan have been skeptical of equities for going on two years. Their tone on Monday didn’t suggest they’re prepared to endorse the rally now, which is probably just as well: It’s pretty long in the tooth. And the economy does appear to be slowing. How long bad news can be “good” is always a tricky call.

“One example of the disconnect between buoyant stocks and the slowing economy [is] the gap between S&P 500 YoY returns and the ISM Manufacturing New Orders / Inventories ratio,” the bank said Monday.

As the figure shows, the disparity’s pretty glaring, but then again, there are always glaring disparities somewhere.

Needless to say, the bank fretted over market breadth and the narrowness of the rally, a concern which long ago crossed the threshold from “pervasive” to “ubiquitous.” Everybody’s talking about the “single market” — a market where only one stock really matters.

“Nvidia now exceeds the value of all listed stocks in Germany, France and the UK respectively,” Kolanovic and co. went on, reminding investors that excluding the “Magnificent 7,” earnings growth has been negative for over a year.

The bank used the simple figure below to illustrate deteriorating breadth.

The share of stocks trading above their 50-day MA went from ~90% earlier this year to around half today. “Rising markets on narrowing breadth has historically been an ominous sign,” the bank said.

The bottom line for JPMorgan’s the same as it was last week: A soft landing’s still possible but a hodgepodge of indicators “suggest elevated market and growth risks.”

Meanwhile, Ned Davis’s Ed Clissold raised his SPX target to 5,725 from 5,250, citing earnings growth, the likelihood of a Q4 rate cut and a possible post-election “relief” rally. (Maybe American democracy has deteriorated to the point that a peaceful transfer of power — i.e., an election that doesn’t end in a violent attempt to overthrow the government — is a rally catalyst.)

“The outlook is not without potential pitfalls,” Clissold conceded. “High valuations and narrowing leadership leave the market vulnerable for bigger drawdowns should the bullish fundamental/macro backdrop falter.”