The stock market is poised to resume its bull market rally after the election, with nearly 50% upside still left to climb over the long term, JPMorgan said in a note to investors Monday.
The U.S. market just suffered its worst week since March, but the macro positioning of investments is still bullish for stock investors over the long haul, strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou wrote.
“We continue to see around 50% upside over the medium to longer term based on our most holistic metric of equity positioning metrics, which links the equity upside to debt and liquidity creation,” the note said.
Panigirtzoglou originally made this call in June, comparing the size of equity market positions to the sizes of total cash and bond positions. The climb for stocks would be driven by the implied equity allocation of nonbank investors rising from about 40% to 49%, which is the post-financial crisis high-water mark.
Since the original note, the S&P 500 has gained about 9% but suffered through several volatile pullbacks.
One of the reasons that JPMorgan expects that rebound is low bond yields, resulting in limited return for bond investors. In theory, that could lead to more demand for stocks as investors search for higher return.
The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury yield has drifted higher in recent weeks but its still roughly more than 1 percentage point below where it was at the end of 2019. Bond yields move opposite to price.
One of the factors that has weighed on stocks in recent weeks has been rising cases of Covid-19 in the United States and Europe. JPMorgan said that the resurgence of the virus was not a long-term concern for stocks because it would likely lead to more government support for the economy and markets.
“Although it has had a negative impact in the short term, the reemergence of lockdowns and resultant growth weakness could bolster the above equity upside over the medium to longer term via inducing more QE and thus more liquidity creation,” the note said.