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“Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.” – Babe Ruth

Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.  

Another month has come and gone, and we’re now at the two-month anniversary of the “Liberation Day” ceremony at the White House Rose Garden. The event set off a massive roller coaster in global financial markets, even though markets are little changed from a point-to-point basis. With earnings season largely behind us, economic data and the President’s Truth Social account will be the most closely watched items of the week.  While the scheduled start will be at 10 AM with the release of May’s ISM Manufacturing report and the April report on Construction Spending, the timing of headlines related to trade is as predictable as a thunderstorm in the summer. You never know when one will pop up, but you know they always will.

It’s hard to believe that even as the S&P 500 was on the cusp of a bear market in early April, the index’s total return over the last 12 months has been better than average. With a total return of 13.5%, the S&P 500’s gain over the last year outpaced the long-term average by 1.5 percentage points. Over the last two and five years, annualized returns have been even stronger at 20.6% and 15.9%, respectively. Both of those returns are also well above the historical average of about 10.5% for all periods since 1928.  Even over the last 10 years, the 12.9% annualized gain is still more than two full percentage points better than average. You have to go out to the 20-year window to find a timeframe where returns are below average, and even there, the 10.5% annualized gain is only slightly less than the long-term average of 10.8%.

The chart below shows how the current one, two, five, ten, and twenty-year returns stack up relative to the long-term average. While the one-year gain is only slightly above the 50th percentile, the S&P 500’s two- and five-year performance is above the 75th percentile.