2018 Looking A Lot Like 1997
As you know, I have been hanging my hat on two scenarios for the market since early February. I updated those yesterday. While both scenarios still lead to Dow 27,000 by the end of Q2, I searched long and hard for further evidence to support my thesis. I love finding market analogs, but there haven’t been many to what transpired over the past 6 weeks.
1997 seems like the most favorable comparison and when I lined them up, it looked fairly strong. Below you can see 1997 followed by current stock market action. I added labels for emphasis. While the rally in 1997 wasn’t as powerful as we saw recently, it was still a solid rally, mini crash, reversal and mild retest. That mild retest fooled a lot of people into thinking that more weakness was coming toward Dow 23,500. On balance, stocks should continue higher although a brief 1-2% pullback should be expected this month.
