S&P 500 Keeps Getting Stuffed at the Goal Line of a New Record High
By Callie Bost
The U.S. stock market can?t close the deal.
Gone are days when equities powered to records with ease — now, they?re breeding anxiety. For two months the Standard & Poor?s 500 Index has been stuck in a pattern of rising to the brink and then failing to break through, leaving investors without a fresh high for the longest stretch since 2013.
Weeks like this are becoming the norm in a market facing weakening earnings and the withdrawal of Federal Reserve stimulus. It?s a shift from the previous three years, a period of almost unrelenting appreciation that rivaled the fastest advances since the 1990s technology bubble.
?In the past when the market has broken to a new high, it?s just shot up from there,? said Matt Maley, an equity strategist at Miller Tabak & Co. in Newton, Massachusetts. ?The inability of the market to break out has made people a little gun-shy. They really want a catalyst to take us higher.?
The frustration can be measured by counting days in which the S&P 500 got to record territory during intraday trading then failed to hold it through the close. That?s happened nine times in 2015, or 47 percent of the time, compared with an average of 38 percent in 2013 and 2014.
The S&P 500?s latest run at a record came Monday, in its first intraday foray past a closing high since May. The gauge ended the day 0.2 percent from its last all-time high, and slid 0.7 percent in the two subsequent sessions. It was little changed at 2,114.48 at 9:39 a.m. in New York.