(Yahoo! Finance) - The stock market is ripping higher and the memes of people throwing Benjamin Graham's "Intelligent Investor" in the trash are back all over X.
The Intelligent Investor meme has become a calling card for moments when rallies in certain trades become so massive that it's hard to use any traditional investing lessons to explain them. Think meme stock mania or the boatload of other post-pandemic trades that have since fizzled.
On Monday, bitcoin (BTC-USD) rose to over $88,000 per coin for the first time ever, dragging cryptocurrency-related stocks with it. Shares of Coinbase (COIN), which offers cryptocurrency trading on its exchange, are now up more than 70% in the past five days.
And it's not just crypto either. Tesla (TSLA) stock is up over 50% in the past five sessions. Artificial intelligence names like Palantir (PLTR) are soaring too, with that stock up nearly 50% in the past five days.
Many of these surging trades are part of the so-called Trump trade, in which areas of the market that could benefit from the president's expected policies are rallying.
But the massive moves indicate there's more than a fundamental story at play here: They're a clear sign that the fear of missing out (FOMO) is alive and well in the 2024 stock market rally.
The S&P 500 (^GSPC) is now up roughly 26% year to date, and the risk of underperforming the benchmark is palpable. Some of the best-performing assets over the past week include areas of the market some have previously dubbed undervalued, like small-cap stocks. The Russell 2000 Index (^RUT) is now up almost 10% over a five-day period.
We may be seeing the beginnings of a year-end chase, TPW Advisory founder Jay Pelosky told Yahoo Finance. "Active managers tend to underperform. One of the reasons why is weeks like last week where if you had any cash at all, you were underperforming because the market went up so strongly. So now you set up that chase into year end."
This chase is on among Wall Street strategists too. Three strategists closely tracked by Yahoo Finance have boosted their views on where the S&P 500 will land in the coming months since the Nov. 6. election results.
"Exuberance lies ahead," Julian Emanuel, who leads the equity, derivatives, and quantitative strategy team at Evercore ISI, wrote in a note to clients Wednesday night. "President-Elect Trump will move fast on policy initiatives, and stocks will move fast in response."
Emanuel cited a "public reengaged in speculation," pointing to the moves in bitcoin and Tesla when laying out the case for the S&P 500 to hit 6,600 by the end of June 2025.
Oppenheimer's John Stoltzfus offered a similar theory when boosting his 2024 year-end target from 5,900 to 6,200.
Stoltzfus's higher market call didn't come with a boost to his earnings forecast, suggesting that the index's valuation will instead keep ballooning higher. Research from FactSet on Friday, showed the S&P 500 is already trading at 22.2 times 2025 earnings estimates. This is above the five-year average of 19.6 and the 20-year average of 15.8.
Strategists often point out that high valuations themselves aren't often a reason to sell. As Evercore's Emanuel wrote recently, "Expensive has a history of getting more expensive and lasting longer with greater gains.
Yardeni Research president Ed Yardeni wrote in a note to clients on Monday he expects the S&P 500 to hit 6,100 by the end of 2024, 7,000 by 2025, and 10,000 by the end of the decade amid the emergence of "animal spirits" in the market.
Spirits, Yardeni added, whose run-up could also "set the stage for a meltdown" after a big melt-up.
But for now, the catalyst for such a downturn isn't in sight. Sure, concerns like sticky inflation readings prompt investors to question whether the Federal Reserve will stop cutting interest rates. But Yardeni believes that valuations can remain high as long as investors continue to see solid a path for earnings growth amid lessened recession fears.
"We aren't saying that a recession can't occur over the rest of the decade," Yardeni wrote. "However, we note that despite the significant tightening of monetary policy during 2022 through 2024, there has been no recession. Why should there be one over the remainder of the Roaring 2020s?"
Forget the short-term moves in bitcoin or Tesla for a second. If Yardeni's call is right and the S&P 500 surges to 10,000 by 2030, it'd be just more than a 11% annual return for the S&P 500, in line with the long-term average over the last 100 years.
If that's the trade you fear missing out on, then you might just have the only kind of FOMO worth chasing.
By Josh Schafer - Reporter
