Wall Street Rally Narrow With Many S&P Stocks Down
Left 67%
Center 0%
Right 33%
2 left · 0 center · 1 right
What happened
As of this week, the S&P 500 stood near record highs after a roughly 14% gain in 2026, while more than four in ten of its members were lower for the year. A Reuters analysis of LSEG data found that the median S&P 500 stock had risen only about 4%, more than 200 companies in the index had fallen, and a quarter of the index was down 11% or more; nearly 38% of members were 20% or more below their 52-week highs, while memory-chip makers Sandisk and Micron Technology had more than tripled. Technology accounted for over 10 percentage points of the index's year-to-date gain, with Nvidia, Apple, Micron, and Advanced Micro Devices among the largest contributors, while Tesla's 15% decline subtracted about 0.3 percentage points. Third-quarter earnings season is beginning Tuesday with reports from JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo, against consensus forecasts of nearly 30% year-over-year S&P 500 profit growth and about 65% growth for technology. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates in September, and fewer than half of S&P 500 companies were trading above their 200-day moving averages.
Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Left-leaning coverage never reports how many S&P 500 stocks are down this year, measuring the lag only as a slide from recent peaks. CNBC puts nearly 38% of the index well below its 52-week high. A second piece adds that the median name is in a 16% drawdown. Right-leaning coverage instead leads with a year-to-date scoreboard the other side skips: more than four in ten members are lower this year. The NY Post adds that the median stock has gained barely 4%.
Left-leaning coverage opens on earnings week and a Street view that the split will close for the bulls. One CNBC piece says Wall Street is convinced the moment will "resolve in the bulls' favor." Right-leaning coverage never mentions that test or those calls, leading instead with chipmakers and a September rate hike.
Why is the median S&P name barely up this year if the other 493 stocks are forecast to deliver sharp profit growth?
Bottom line
You can read both CNBC market pieces and never learn that four in ten S&P stocks are down this year. That count is the NY Post headline.
The receipts — 2 facts one side's coverage lacks
- By Goldman's preferred measure, breadth has deteriorated to its weakest level since the DotCom Bubble
- The other 493 stocks in the S&P 500 are forecast to deliver 27% year-over-year earnings gains
The Left View
CNBC framed the week as a test of whether steep earnings expectations and continued technology outperformance can sustain a rally that most strategists still expect to continue. The network reported that beats have been the norm since mid-2023, that profit growth is forecast to broaden beyond the Magnificent 7, and that several firms remain constructive: Goldman Sachs shifted to an "overweight" stance citing a "Goldilocks" backdrop with low recession risk, UBS forecast the S&P 500 at 8,400 by June of next year, and Morgan Stanley's Lisa Shalett argued that AI capital spending and wealth-linked consumption have "thus far proved rate-insensitive." Columnist Mike Santoli described a "deeply divergent" market in which a consensus is "coalescing" around the idea that last week's firming in the majority of stocks will help investors not fully committed to mega-cap leaders; Goldman's Lee Coppersmith said breadth had deteriorated to its weakest level since the DotCom bubble but that he did not view the narrowness as a warning and continued to "favor SPX higher over the next 1-3 months." CNBC also carried caution: Bank of America said the index "reads expensive" on 17 of 20 valuation measures and that "healthy beats are the status quo and may not be enough to drive stocks higher," while John Kolovos of Macro Risk Advisors warned that if index strength persists "without meaningful improvement in breadth," historical evidence suggests "the harder the path forward becomes, which could take the entire market down, including tech."
The Right View
The New York Post emphasized that the headline advance "is masking" widespread weakness, with gains concentrated in "a few chipmakers and other AI-related heavyweights" as the bull market nears a four-year anniversary. It tied much of the lag among industrials, consumer-goods sellers, and real estate companies to the Federal Reserve's September rate hike and expectations of further increases. Ross Mayfield of Baird said that anything outside the AI trade or energy "face huge headwinds in the form of higher oil and higher yields" and that "the Fed has killed a lot of bull markets in the past, and if we get into an aggressive rate-hike cycle, that will be tough to stomach." Tim Ghriskey of Ingalls & Snyder said AI is "such a powerful story" that he had "never had as narrow a portfolio, in terms of themes," adding that the theme "just attracts managers and assets" and that any rotation "would come back." The Post noted that eight of eleven sectors were up, led by energy's 42% jump and technology's 32% surge, but that technology's weight drove over 10 percentage points of the S&P 500's gain while energy contributed less than 1%.
Our Take (balanced)
The left-leaning coverage's strongest argument is that a narrowly led advance can still be a durable bull market if earnings, especially in technology, keep beating elevated forecasts: consecutive quarters of large beats, upward revisions across the AI hardware chain, and a cluster of major-firm calls—Goldman's overweight and "Goldilocks" backdrop, UBS's 8,400 target, Coppersmith's view that weak breadth is not a warning—treat concentration as uncomfortable rather than fatal. The right-leaning coverage's strongest argument is that the cap-weighted index conceals how many constituents have already lost ground under higher yields, with Mayfield warning that "the Fed has killed a lot of bull markets in the past" and Ghriskey describing an unusually theme-narrow portfolio as capital crowds into AI. The central unresolved tension is whether this concentration is classic bull-market leadership that earnings season and stable yields can broaden—or a hollow advance that, if breadth does not improve, will eventually pull the indexes down as well.
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