The Dow and S&P 500 are on track to do something they haven’t done in more than three decades.
The Dow was up 545 points, or 1.3%, on Friday, while the S&P 500 was up 1.4%. They are both on pace to extend their winning streaks to nine days.
The last time there were nine consecutive trading days where the S&P and Dow each gained was Jan. 3, 1992, according to Dow Jones Market Data. At the time, the S&P was riding a nine-day streak, while the Dow had risen 11 days in a row.
The Nasdaq Composite was up 1.6% on Friday, but it hasn’t risen every day during the streak.
“It’s pretty remarkable in the sense that the S&P at this particular moment I think is actually slightly above where it was right before the Liberation Day announcement,” Dave Donabedian, co-chief investment officer of CIBC Private Wealth, told Barron’s. “So, if you’d gone to sleep for the last month, you would have said, ‘Oh, boring market.’ But not really.”
Donabedian says the latest mainline economic data—from Friday’s jobs reports to recent retail sales numbers—suggest the economy is not in a recession. He also thinks the tenor of first-quarter earnings reports have been better than expected in two senses.
First, there have been more beats than disappointments, but also fewer companies than many expected have pulled expectations for the rest of the year, according to Donabedian. He also notes even some companies who are unsure about tariff risks are still currently seeing continuity in their businesses.
“Institutional investors are certainly talking more bearishly, but look at retail flows: They continue to pour into equity,” Donabedian says. “And so we’ve had this bounce. And I think you’ve got a lot of investors making a bet that peak policy fear is behind us.”
