With bullish signals emerging across the board, let’s examine five key charts that illustrate how the S&P 500 has defied ...

The top 20 S&P 500 companies accounted for 52.3% of Q2 2024 buybacks, an increase from Q1 2024’s 50.9%, and above the historical average of 47.5% and the pre-COVID historical average of 44.5%.

Let’s start with the historical perspective. Most of the time the stock market has earned positive returns Figure 1 in the chart below shows the annual return in the S&P 500 since 1926 ...

The top 20 S&P 500 companies accounted for 53.2% of Q3 2024 buybacks, a marginal rise from Q2 2024’s 52.3% and above the historical average of 47.6% and the pre-COVID historical average of 44.5%.

The S&P 500 gained more than 20% for the second year in a row in 2024, the first time that's happened since the late 1990s. The index has carved out a head and shoulders pattern, a classic chart ...