Investors piled into stocks today after the biggest global cyberattack in history struck over 100 nations, Chinese economic data disappointed and fell, America faces a "constitutional crisis" if the media is to be believed, and US economic data dumped... Only one clip is needed...
With futures looking ominously ungreen this morning, what better way to prop them up than to upgrade the stock that alone has contributed to 13% of the S&P's return YTD...
... Apple.
That'sprecisely what both BofA and Goldman have done this morning, with the former raising its 12-month price target to $170 from $164, "based on a target P/E of 15x (unchanged) and our CY18 EPS estimate of $11.38 (up from $10.91)."
In the past week, Goldman's warnings about an imminent market correction have been coming out on almost daily basis.
Two weeks ago - as of April 28 - we presented readers with a striking statistic from Goldman Sachs, showing just how much breadth in the market has collapsed and how dominant a handful of large cap companies have become in terms of both overall profitability and market impact:
From Nicholas Colas of Convergex
Today we continue our recent exploration of the ongoing low volatility in US equity markets, but with a novel twist. Instead of looking at the CBOE VIX Index, we look at the historical trends in actual S&P 500 price volatility. Not only is the dataset longer here (starting in the 1950s rather than 1990), but it is also “Stickier” than the twitchy VIX.
Three takeaways.