Key insights
- Bank of America indicates 70% of bear market warning signals are active, with the S&P 500 appearing expensive on most valuation metrics, even surpassing dot-com era levels. Beneath headline strength, market breadth is deteriorating, with a few large stocks driving gains. Aggressive AI-driven capex spending by hyperscalers, potentially consuming nearly all operating cash flow by 2026, raises concerns about sustainability and market parallels to the dot-com bubble, despite current mega-cap profitability.
Just read a Bloomberg piece that got me thinking. BofA is basically saying there are way too many red flags showing up in the market right now and that it might be a good time to start taking some profits. What really caught my attenttion is that they claim around 70% of their historical bear-market warning signals have already been triggered. They also said the S&P 500 is expensive on 17 of the 20 valuation metrics they track, and on some of those measures we're actually trading richer than during the dot-com era, which honestly SURPRISED me a bit.
What I found even more interesting is that the index still looks pretty strong if you just glance at the headline numbers, but underneath it things seem a lot less healthy. According to the note, the gap between the biggest winners and biggest losers inside the index has stretched to levels not seen since 2000. Feels like a relatively small group of stocks is doing a ton of the heavy lifting while everyone else is just kinda tagging along. (We all know the AI influence on it)
The other thing that made me stop for a second was exactly the AI spending. BofA is projecting that hyperscalers could end up spending close to 100% of their operating cash flow on capex by the end of 2026. Maybe thats simply what it costs to stay ahead in the AI race, but spending basically all your cash flow on infrastructure feels pretty agressive to me. Then again, maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way. For anyone who was investing back in 1999-2000, (i was) does this actually feel similiar? Or is the comparison unfair becuse today's mega-caps are printing huge profits, generating real cash flow and running actual businesses instead of mostly selling a story??..........
Source: Bloomberg via Yahoo Finance