A big chunk of the 9% rally in the last 12 trading sessions is the result of short covering in some of the market’s riskier stocks. Traders and investors who had placed bets that alert pounded stocks would fall some more have been buying back those brewed shares in order to limit further losses.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 has risen nearly 11% over the past 11 trading sessions.
Not that there’s anything wrong with the 5.79% gain in Nvidia (NVDA) or the 6.78% gain in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM) today when the Nasdaq Composite rose by 3.79% and when 82 of the Nasdaq 100’s (NDX) constituents traded higher in the session. But I would take a hard look at what technology stocks beat the index and the usual big tech guys. Here’s a list of the top performing NASDAQ 100 stocks on Tuesday.
Buy on the Dip” is Back, baby! What other conclusion would you expect investors and traders to draw from the last month? Especially since the longer term record of this market has conditioned them to buy whenever the market dips by 5%.
So far, this rally has traced out the perfect “Buy on the Dip.” The S&P 500 hit an intraday high of 6,920.34 in October 2025, with a record closing high of 6,890.89 on October 28.The index recorded its maximum drop from the late‑October high on November 20, when it closed at 6,538.76, 5.11% below the October 28 record closing high of 6,890.89. From the close on November 20–the day after odds of a Fed rate cut bottomed–to the close on November 26, the S&P 500 gained 273.85 points, rising from 6,538.76 to 6,812.61. That’s an increase of about 4.19% over that period. If you had blindly followed the formula and bought when the dip reached 5%, you would now be looking at a gain of 4.2% in a week.
What’s not to like about that?
I’d temper my exuberance a bit. Some of the big bounce today is a result of extremely negative sentiment on AI stocks in the last few weeks and some highly publicized selling by a few big name (Peter Thiel comes to mind). The big test will come in the next few days when wecsee if Nvidia’s earnings can ignite an end of the year rally across the broader market.
Nvidia’s (NVDA) revenue rose 62% to $57 billion in the fiscal third quarter, which ended October 26. Earnings were $1.30 a share. Analysts had predicted sales of $55.2 billion and earnings of $1.26 a share.
It’s easy to get so caught up in the current increases and decreases of the Trump tariffs that we lose track of how big an increase even the reduced 10% global tariff that President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday, April 9, is from the pre-Trump rates. At the end of 2024, the average effective tariff rate for the United States was 2.2%, according to the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Stocks saw their biggest rally since November 2022. As of 10:30 a.m. New York time Tuesday morning, the Standard & Poor’s 500 was up 3.80%. The NASDAQ Composite was higher by 4.32%. The CBOE S&P 500 Volatile Index, the VIX “fear index” had dropped 19.6% to a still very elevated 37.6. So what has fueled today’s rally and the turn around from last week’s panic selling?
Today’s video is Rally to Continue Through December; I’m Worried About January. While I recorded this video on November 5 (before the election results), I still believed we were looking at a rally through the end of the year. Looking at the patterns of earnings and cash flow, and with the election complete, we’ll continue with this upward movement until January. Generally, rallies happen every December as money managers look to buy to “window dress” their portfolios at the end of the year. Now that the election is over, any pre-election hedges will turn into more cash entering the market in December. Fourth quarter earnings will likely be the best of the year but the problem is that 2025 will not see as much earning growth as 2024. Likely, in January, companies may issue negative guidance for the year ahead. I don’t expect a depression or recession, but I do think we’ll see a slow down/pull back and we’re certainly due for 5-10% correction. Continue to ride the wave through December, and then look to make some profits in January. Selling in the new year will also mean you don’t have to take the tax hit this year
I continue to see this rally continuing through the fourth quarter of 2024vbefore faltering in the first quarter of 2025. That call does assume that we’ll get through today’s election and its aftermath with relatively little actual violence–protests in the streets from the losing side and lots of court cases, but no mass armed violence. And it assumes that projected earnings growth in the fourth quarter will live up to expectations and show the highest growth rate in all of 2024. No one knows what this post-election period will bring. So let’s move onto assumption #2: How likely is it that fourth quarter growth will hold up?
I understand why no one wants to get off the rally bus. Last week’s gains pushed the Standard & Poor’s 500’s total return for 2024 above 20% again. The index jumped 1.7% on Thursday, putting in its 39th record close of the year. Both stocks and Treasuries are headed for a fifth straight month of gains. But anyone expecting the S&P 500 to build on its year-to-date gain should consider that Wall Street’s own strategists already see the upside exhausted.
What happened to all that selling? And the conviction that the U.S. economy ws headed for a recession? The Standard & Poor’s 500 finished Thursday, August 15, with another up day for a 6-day rally that has pushed the index up 6.6%.Treasury yields surged with the yield on the 2-year Treasury, the maturity most sensitive to shifts in sentiment about the direction of Federal Reserve interest rate policy, climbing back above 4%. The S&P 500 climbed 1.6% on the day. The Nasdaq 100 added 2.5%. The small-cap Russell 2000 gained2.5%. The CBOE Volatility Index, Wall Street’s “fear gauge,”the VIX, dropped back to near 15, below its long-term average, and hugely below its August 5 close at 38.57. The proximate cause of the rebound rally? Three reports showing that the U.S.consumer is alive, well, and still buying stuff.
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