by Adam Hamilton
Zeal LLC
With the stock markets near a critical juncture during the most-extreme economic dislocations of our lifetimes, big US stocks’ fundamentals have never been more important. After plummeting in a brutal stock panic on the catastrophic economic damage caused by governments’ draconian lockdowns to fight COVID-19, stocks have skyrocketed in a monster rally. Are these gains righteous or doomed to fail?
Mid-February feels lifetimes ago, when the flagship US S&P 500 stock index (SPX) surged to a series of new all-time-record highs. The last one at 3386.2 capped an epic secular bull that powered 400.5% higher over 11.0 years. That proved the second-largest and first-longest in all of US stock-market history, freakishly huge. Then COVID-19 viciously slammed the markets like a sledgehammer to the skull.