Quick Read – The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) has climbed 30% since Election Day 2024, driven by dominant AI, defense, and manufacturing names that are capturing a trillion-dollar data center and chip spending cycle, with margins holding steady despite elevated inflation and…
opolitical tensions. – The market’s continued strength rests on the assumption that policy announcements rarely trigger lasting damage and that the AI revenue ramp will justify forward earnings multiples in the high 20s to low 40s, but positioning is extended across hedge funds and systematic strategies, leaving little defensive cohort to absorb a drawdown if rate cuts stall and capex pauses arrive simultaneously. – The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 stocks and SPDR S&P 500 ETF wasn’t one of them. Get them here FREE
The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY) keeps rising more and more, no matter how “bad” the news gets. Since Election Day 2024, the index is up 30%, a run that has absorbed a shooting war with Iran, a tariff regime that rewrites itself by tweet, and an inflation print that refuses to behave. The bumper sticker version, popular on trading desks from Greenwich to Greenwich Avenue, is “don’t fight Trump.” The honest version is more interesting.
The market has decided that none of the things keeping cable news producers employed actually matter to corporate earnings, and so far the market has been right. What the tape is actually pricing A roughly 30% move in 18 months on a $50-plus trillion index ranks, in dollar terms, as one of the largest wealth creation events in American history, and it has happened while the Consumer Price Index climbed from 315.493 in November 2024 to 333.020 in April 2026. Inflation has stayed elevated while equities outran it.