Make a wish. The bull market is celebrating its sixth birthday this week.
Exactly six years ago Monday the S&P 500 closed at 676, the lowest closing level of the terrible bear market in stocks.
Investors brave enough to pull the trigger on stocks back then would have made a killing: The S&P 500 is up more than 200% since March 2009, making this the fourth-longest bull market in history.
Veteran market strategist Art Hogan was one of the few stock pickers brave enough back then to predict the carnage was over. He appeared on CNBC in October 2008 to declare: “Enough is going to be enough. … The bottom gets put in today.”
The call became known as “Hogan’s Bottom,” and it proved to be a medium-term basement for stocks.
“It was not a very crowded room of people who felt the worst was over,” Hogan told CNNMoney.
‘This is for real’: Hogan’s call was based on a realization that stocks had fallen more than even during the Crash of 1929 and a feeling that the federal government would respond more forcefully this time. He was right: The U.S. rescued the banks and the Federal Reserve restored confidence by doing things no one had ever seen before like quantitative easing and near zero percent interest rates.
The market repeatedly tested Hogan’s Bottom and briefly broke through that level in February and early March 2009.
That’s when Mark Haines, a CNBC anchor who passed away in 2011, made a call of his own.
“I think we’re at a bottom. I really do,” Haines told viewers on March 10, 2009. “This is for real. … I think it’s going to have legs.”
Boy was he right. The Dow has skyrocketed from an intraday bear market low of 6,469 to nearly 18,300 earlier this month.
Bubble trouble? Now that the trip through memory lane is over, the real question is: Where are stocks heading next?
On the heels of the stock market’s best month since October 2011, the market tanked at the end of last week. Investors threw a temper tantrum over the prospect that another very solid jobs report will force the Fed to raise interest rates, making stocks less attractive.
Six years after calling a bottom in stocks, Hogan still doesn’t see a top in sight. He definitely doesn’t buy into talk about a bubble forming in the U.S. stock market.
“You can call any asset class that goes up a bubble — if you don’t own it,” said Hogan, who is currently chief market strategist at Wunderlich Securities.
Stocks are going up and garnering higher valuations because alternatives like safe corporate and government bonds don’t look very appetizing.
Betting on consumers: At the same time, the U.S. stock market continues to capitalize on healthy corporate earnings and relative strength in the economy.
“The U.S. economy is one of the only ones in the developed world that is growing,” said Hogan.
But with stocks trading near all-time highs, investors are searching for sectors that offer the most upside.
Hogan is placing his faith in the hands of American consumers, which should continue to benefit from cheap energy prices.
That’s why he likes consumer-facing stocks, like restaurants and apparel makers, with strong business models and limited exposure to the strong dollar.
Watch out for … Hogan is far more cautious about utilities, a dividend-rich group that investors searching for yield have feasted on in recent years. The S&P 500 utility sector plunged around 3% on Friday amid concerns a Fed rate hike will kill this group’s status as dividend darlings.
He’s also advising clients to stay away from stocks that become favorites of momentum traders.
Two names that fit that category are GoPro and El Pollo Loco, each of which have fallen out of favor of investors due to excessively high valuations.
“You want to be very careful of those hyperbolic momentum names that you find yourself cultishly attracted to,” he said.
