Do you remember the mood going into 2024?
Investors were nervous that the bull market had gotten too ahead of itself. In fact, Wall Street analysts had their lowest target price for the S&P 500 in a decade, with the average strategists expecting a mere +1% gain.
At the time, I put my reputation on the line to say stocks likely had a lot more upside. And I've been proven correct. In fact, the S&P 500 has had its eleventh-best start to a year ever.
But while I nailed this trade, my sights are on what stocks will do over the next 12 months...
...meaning now is a great time to review our portfolio positions.
Core Portfolio (SPY, QQQ)
We've been right to be patient on our buys over the last month.
Our SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) and Nasdaq QQQ Trust (QQQ) positions were deeply overbought until last week's minor pullback:
However, just because the market is overbought it does not mean stocks have to go down in significant fashion. In fact, the pause / pullback we saw last week is far more common:
How significant the pullback should be is unknowable, but as sure as night follows day a pullback is a natural conclusion to overbought readings. So while last week was a bit painful, it's a completely normal reaction after the swift move higher we saw over the last month.
The near-term direction of the S&P 500 and Nasdaq -two of our largest Patreon Portfolio positions - will depend on Big Tech earnings, which we'll discuss in the next section.
New Members: Allocate 5% of your portfolio to a long position in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) and 5% of your portfolio to a long position in the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ).