I'll admit that like many economists and market commentators, I have warned about more market calamities than have actually come to pass. I'll say this in my defense:
If you ignore risk, you take your chances with what the market does next. If you always seek to account for risk, you can ride the highs without being pummeled by all the lows. Over time, that's a more gratifying investment experience.
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Gamblers eventually run out of money. Investors endure.
That's why the comparison below between the S&P 500 Index ($SPX), the Nasdaq-100 Index ($IUXX), and the U.S. 10-year Treasury Bond yield in 2000 and 2026 caused me to shout "whoa!" while I was home alone.
I'm going to show you three charts that at the top each show SPY and QQQ over a period of time. And in the bottom frame, the U.S. 10-year Treasury Bond rate over that same period.
First, here is June 2, 2026, through last Wednesday's close. SPY has been trying to break its flat plane for a few months to no avail. It isn't crashing, but it is stagnating.
Now take a look at the same indexes, the same dates. But from a different calendar year. This is the year 2000, as the dot-com bubble was bursting. The stock market peaked in March 2000, and flopped around for a bit. But as of this time (mid-September) of that year, Wall Street pundits were still saying things like "with all that's happened, we're still just below all-time highs."
Maybe my eyes are just getting older. But I see a lot of similarities between 2026 and 2000. More importantly, I remember that latter era vividly. As a portfolio manager, market technician, and plain old human living through the early days of a life-altering technology. Just like today.
Now, we don't know what will happen during the remainder of September, October, the rest of 2026, and over the next 12 months. But on the odd chance that 2026-2027 continues to resemble 2000-2021, let's see what happened to SPY, QQQ, and the 10-year rate.
To quote the great philosopher Scooby-Doo, "ruh roh." SPY experienced a slow but steady decline, which left it 23% lower.
QQQ took it on the noggin, down 64% in just under a year, on the way to a more-than-80% crash from 2000 through early 2003. It even bounced a couple of times and rallied back sharply and quickly before resuming its relentless path downward.
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