Investors have had a rough go of it to start off September. First there was a big tech selloff to kick off the month, and markets en masse have since faltered amid worries over stalling stimulus and a quickly approaching election. Now, as the bull market officially turned six months old Monday, things may be on a rockier path.
According to LPL Financial’s Ryan Detrick, the current bull market no longer boasts the strongest start in history—although previous best starts (in 1982 and 2009) did see continued gains in the months following (see chart).
As of Monday’s close, the S&P 500 had fallen over 8% since peaking on Sept. 2, and it has posted three consecutive weeks of declines for the first time this year, before managing to rebound roughly 1% to close on Tuesday.
But according to analysts at Morgan Stanley, the selloff, particularly in tech stocks, may have further to go despite its roughly 13% drop so far this month. That’s because the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 could teeter around its 200-day average, Morgan Stanley’s chief U.S. equity strategist Mike Wilson writes, which would spell another double-digit tumble from current levels.
To boot, strategists like Detrick have cautioned that historically, September and October in an election year have been a bit rockier than the summer months. And while “selling thus far in September has been largely concentrated in the technology and large-cap growth corners of the market, Monday saw decliners on the NYSE outnumber advancers by 7:1, the worst since late June,” analysts at LPL wrote Tuesday.
That doesn’t mean that, long term, investors will shun stocks (especially favored tech names) through year’s end, however. LPL’s Jeff Buchbinder recently told Fortune, “This recovery has exceeded our expectations; the earnings rebound has exceeded our expectations; and we think stocks including tech should end the year higher than where it is right now.”
But this week has been a test of the resiliency of the market, as Charles Schwab’s vice president of trading and derivatives Randy Frederick notes the S&P 500 index must hold above the 3,222 point level to stave off a technical correction, which would be the first since June.
Yet on Tuesday stocks managed to fight off that level comfortably, with the S&P 500 closing up just over 1%.
