It took nearly 15 months, but the Russell 2000 Index finally broke out to a new 52-week high. On November 25, the Russell 2000 gained an impressive 2.1% to close at its highest level since October 2018.

Small caps have lagged their larger counterparts for much of this year, and the Russell 2000 is still nearly 7% away from new highs, but this development is a major step in the right direction.

“Seeing small caps at 52-week highs is further confirmation to the overall health of this bull market,” explained LPL Financial Senior Market Strategist Ryan Detrick. “We’ve already seen large caps and v

While earnings declined year over year in the third quarter, results still exceeded expectations. Tariffs, ongoing policy uncertainty, and slower global growth have led to this earnings lull, but we remain optimistic that earnings growth bottomed last quarter and is poised to accelerate. 

Recap of Third Quarter Earnings

As expected, corporate America delivered little in the way of earnings growth in the third quarter. S&P 500 Index earnings fell around 2% year over year, about 2 percentage points above October 1 estimates (source: FactSet). That doesn’t sound great, but given the economic headwinds, the result

U.S. stocks’ rally paused this week as investors processed another batch of trade headlines. The S&P 500 Index declined for the first time in seven weeks, breaking the benchmark’s longest winning streak since November 2017. Equities dropped on Tuesday after U.S. lawmakers passed a bill in support of Hong Kong protesters, leading China to threaten retaliation if the bill becomes law. Then, reports released on Wednesday suggested the United States and China may not finalize a limited trade agreement by the end of the year. Trade headlines turned more optimistic on Thursday, but the brightened prospects weren’t enough to pu

October’s leading indicators show the domestic economy could be bottoming.

The Conference Board’s Leading Economic Index (LEI) declined 0.1% in October, following a downwardly revised 0.2% decline in September. As shown in the LPL Chart of the Day, the LEI grew 0.3% year over year last month, tying June 2016 for the slowest growth of the expansion. Historically, year-over-year declines have preceded every U.S. recession since 1955, so we monitor this metric in our Five Forecasters.

Even though the gauge barely eked out a year-over-year gain last month, we see signs that the worst may be over