Take Bank of America Corp strategist Michael Hartnett, who’s advising clients to pull back from US stocks because he’s “convinced the bear market has unfinished business.”
It was supposed to be one of the greatest stock-market comebacks of all time. But after a summer slump, there’s a nagging fear it might just keep slipping away.
Roughly a year after the S&P 500 Index bottomed out, money managers have seen the stock market’s gains erode on expectations the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates elevated well into next year.
More than 180 stocks in the benchmark are now trading for less than they were 12 months ago, even after the equity market snapped a four-week losing streak with a rally Friday that drove it to a small gain. And in a little over two months, more than a third of the S&P 500’s advance this year has been erased, sapping investors’ confidence and sowing fear that equities have further to fall.
