S&P 500 Index: Bouts of weakness are the trend – Charles Schwab

It's been a very rough four-and-a-half month to start the year – the third-worst at this point on record for the S&P 500 and the worst since 1970. Aggressive Fed action, tightening financial conditions, and the liquidity drain may keep downward pressure on stocks, economists at Charles Schwab report.

There is no perfect signal of when bear markets end

“The Federal Reserve is on a mission to squash inflation via the tightening of financial conditions. Now the Fed concedes it may have to allow more economic and/or market harm to bring inflation down, with equity market volatility/weakness in a vacuum not likely to trigger a shift in policy.”

“There is no perfect signal of when bear markets end. What we do know is that in bear markets, from a technical perspective, support becomes less relevant and resistance becomes more relevant. Assessing technicians' consensus, as an example, resistance sits somewhere between 4330 and 4400 on the S&P 500, a range (for now) that represents a key hurdle.”

“For now, rallies are more likely countertrend, while bouts of weakness are the trend.”