From Bear to Bull: Understanding the S&P 500’s Remarkable Recovery

And now let's get to the big story breakdown.

The S&P 500 hit its first record close since February last week, marking a 24% rally from April's tariff-induced sell-off.

The 89 trading days between records were the swiftest ever to a new high after a 15% decline, and stocks climbed recently after a ceasefire between Israel and Iran lowered oil prices and boosted up.

Ongoing trade negotiations with China and the EU have also lifted investor sentiment ahead of a tariff hike deadline.

Joining us with more is Peter Tuchman, senior floor trader at Trade Mosque.

Peter, happy Monday.

Good morning.

Well, what a quarter it's been, right?

April, May, June, we saw plenty of volatility across the markets, politics, geopolitics, trade.

And so what do you make of the record highs, you know, that is a mouthful, and I look, I'm as baffled as you are.

I think we could be sitting here with all that's gone on globally around tariffs, around the wars, around obviously the Middle East and oil, and you know if the market was down 1000, you and I would be sitting here being able to make sense of it, right?

The fact that we are where we are and the markets are trading at record highs is spectacular.

Very, not very often.

I would say there are a number of times in history where markets sort of just go off on their own jack, right?

Very often economies and markets trade in concert with each other and then sometimes it's just that you know they go off.

We saw it happen during COVID for a little while as well.

It usually goes in line with some kind of a stimulus package, but look, we've seen.

So much and the fact is within this quarter we have seen the low lows and the high highs, and that's extraordinary for me.

What's fascinating about that is that the level of acceleration that we're seeing that we could go from, you know, that's why I don't using words bull and bear markets and depression and recession and all those seem a little obsolete to me in a world where we could literally be in a full bear market and you know, and then and then within 8 hours be in a bull market in a bear.

Market, you know, or see where we've been down 20% in April and now we are trading at record highs.

It's extraordinary.

I think everyone should be really happy about it, you know.

I'm sure there are people out there who are sort of fearful like how did we get here?

Is this a bubble, you know, all the questions that people ask when markets do trade at record highs.

I think there's a lot of positive news on the horizon.

We talked on Friday, you know, you laid out a scenario that was really significant.

The fact is, yes, there's been a lot of backdoor diplomacy going on while we've been focused on the war in the Middle East.

We've been getting the days have been leading us up to July 4th, July 9th, July 7th, all of those sort of that were at one point looming days of fear around Mr.

Trump and the tariffs seem like maybe there's some deals in the works, right, UK, UK, EU, India, you know, I think the only thing that Seems questionable at this moment as Canada, but otherwise we seem like we're in a good space.

Yeah, and you bring up an important point because this past quarter we saw so many volatile moves across all asset classes, and we're not just talking 1000 point moves in the Dow.

We're talking as much as 3000 on certain days here.

So given everything that you've laid out in terms of the near term, what are you looking for when it comes to Catalysts?

That's a really good question.

You know, I think we're going to have to, at the end of the day, earnings and tariffs are going to be the two things that really seem important to me.

OK, the lifeblood of this market is earnings.

Last earnings season we had a lot of difficulties because it was at the heart of all the controversy around tariffs.

And when you have companies like General Motors and Ford and United Airlines and a number of other companies that were not able to, even JPMorgan, not even able to.

Give guidance, right?

Everyone needs to know, right earnings are what happened last quarter.

Guidance is what's happening next quarter.

And so while the earnings were in the bag already, guidance, they were incapable of giving us any kind of a reasonable prediction on what's going to be coming up because we didn't know what the cost of goods sold.

We didn't know what the tariffs were going to be.

And so that's a scary period of time, you know.

The last time we saw that was during COVID, right?

There was a period in the midst.

COVID, it was a it was a November, December, and Jamie Dimon said for the first time in his experience, we do not have enough knowns to be able to make a call on the guidance and we saw that last quarter day after day, week after week.

There was a period of time and during that April, it was one of the contributing factors to these big low selloffs that we saw in April was the fact that there was just the horizon just looked really dark and cloudy without we had no.

Certainty at all.

So I'm hoping this and even in the midst of that earnings we're still good.

So now hopefully if we get a little more of a if we get more certainty around the tariffs and we make some of these deals, we've got some done, done, done deal, deal, deal.

We heard that from Lutnick and Besset last quarter.

Hopefully those are now going to come to fruition.

We get the deals that we need and we hold on to the earnings that we've had, then we are able to set some good guidance going for the 3rd and the 4th quarter.

Then we get some clarity around the interest rate cuts, and we're probably going to have to.

And then as long as we're in a if we can maintain somewhat of a slow growth and not a no growth environment and landscape, then we can cut interest rates without fear of stagflation.

Yeah, and you brought up an important point when it comes to some companies not being able to issue guidance.

That was a major point of concern, but here we are at the end of the 2nd quarter, the end of the first half of 2025, and yet once again a lot of banks are yet once again raising their price targets for the S&P 500.

So before I let you go on this final trading session of Q2, what are your levels that you're watching when it comes to the S&P 500 before I tell you?

That I'm really excited about the fact that you know you talked about the stress test about the banks.

That's really important because it's at times like this when we sort of are in the corridor between really, you know, getting through some harder times and looking towards brighter times.

The fact is it's always good to know markets are based on confidence, right?

And I'm seeing a nice robust environment when it comes to IPOs coming here on the floor of the exchange.

You all know we're here on the floor of the stock exchange, right, with FinTech TV and I think that's fairly positive and to be able to know that in the event of anything of a downturn because you know that can happen, right, sometimes we're one tweet away from crazy, you know, and there are all these global situations that can happen as long as the banks are in good shape and the consumers' balance sheet is OK, I think the times ahead are positive.

The Dow 45,000, where are we now?

You have it in front of me, right?

So I'm looking at a Dow 45,000.

Obviously I'm looking at S&P.

500, you know, my man Dan Ives is always forward looking.

He even in the midst of the darkness, even though he was calling that time a bit of an Armageddon when we were in the midst of the April downturn, right, he said we're going to see a 6 in front of that S&P again and now I'm hoping we get a 6500 in the near future or surely by year end.

OK, Peter, we will have to leave it there, but it is a holiday shortened week here in the US with Fourth of July on Friday, so we'll see you again trading in happy July 4th.