Stocks posted a strong first quarter, but the pace of gains is likely to slow down. While investors shouldn’t necessarily bail out, they should become more selective.
The S&P 500 rallied 5.8% for the first three months of the year. Tailwinds were plentiful: Vaccinations for Covid-19 speeded up, while trillions of dollars of government spending shored up demand.
The economy is quickly bouncing back from the damage that lockdowns dealt it in 2020. Figures released Wednesday by ADP show the U.S. added 517,000 private-sector jobs in March, the highest total since September. Retail sales were 5% higher in January than in December.
The economic rebound explains the Russell 2000’s 13% run to start the year. Smaller-capitalization companies, such as those in the Russell index, often experience much larger swings in earnings than big companies.
Because they are smaller, they find it harder to cut costs when times are tough, so their earnings fall harder when the economy sours. The flip side is that profits take off when conditions improve. Plus, their relatively limited access to capital makes it harder for them to weather downturns, so their stocks can plunge and surge as the economy changes.
Cyclical stocks both small and large, ranging from banks to oil producers to sellers of discretionary consumer goods, have been outperformers this year for a similar reason. They see an outsize benefit when the economy reheats, compared with utilities or companies in consumer staples.
Where the market goes now is less clear. “We’re at a crossroads,” said JJ Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade. “Everyone’s trying to figure out what’s next. Part of it is a wait and see.”
Stocks lack substantial fuel for gains. Companies have finished reporting their fourth-quarter earnings, expectations about vaccines can’t get much better, and government spending to prop up the economy is poised to decline, at least on an annual basis. The $2 trillion of infrastructure spending that the Biden administration has proposed would span eight years, equating to $250 billion a year.
And while the economic news is likely to keep improving, the rebound has likely peaked. The economy will likely see “slowing rates of change in personal income, purchasing managers indexes and GDP,” wrote Mike Wilson, chief U.S. equity strategist at Morgan Stanley, in a note.
Meanwhile, stocks already reflect much of the positive news, in that valuations are high. The average stock in the S&P 500 trades at 22 times the per-share earnings expected for the coming year, while some strategists on Wall Street assume a multiple of 20 times in making their forecasts for the index.
It would be no surprise if valuations head back toward 20 times, which would mean few gains for stocks unless earnings rise more than expected. That is especially true because yields on safe government debt are rising, making bonds more appealing as an alternative.
The yield on 10-year Treasury debt has climbed from 0.91% as of the start of the year to 1.72% on Wednesday. It is expected to approach 2% this year.
Earnings are expected to keep growing at a strong clip through 2022, but the downward pressure on valuations leaves many fund managers expecting an essentially flat move on the S&P for the year, according to a survey from Citigroup strategists.
Still, earnings reports to be released later in the year could contain positive surprises. Data from a recent Credit Suisse note show that revenue growth often beats increases in gross domestic product by about twofold. The consensus expectation is that GDP will increase by about 7% this year, so revenue would grow around 14%, not the 9% that FactSet data shows Wall Street has penciled in.
Higher revenue growth implies higher earnings growth, and continued gains for stocks. A counterargument is that so-called breadth in upward revisions to earnings forecasts—the extent to which calls are rising for the profits of companies across the various sectors in the S&P 500—may have peaked.
A chart in a research report published by Wilson, the Morgan Stanley strategist, shows that breadth recently hit a level last seen in 2018 and 2010. In both instances, breadth quickly fell precipitously, with forecast earnings for more companies revised lower. Investors may be pleasantly surprised to see earnings estimates rise from here, but some data indicate they shouldn’t count on that.
Fortunately, small-cap value stocks have stronger near-term earnings growth and are trading at more tolerable valuations. They may keep outperforming large-caps regardless of whether forecasts for earnings rise or fall.
Now is the time to be picky.
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