The Roaring 2020s Are Real: S&P Breadth Hits New Highs in 2026

Forget the doom-scroll. While the Strait of Hormuz dominates headlines and oil traders hyperventilate at $83 a barrel, something quietly bullish is happening beneath the surface of the US equity market. Ed Yardeni, whose Roaring 2020s thesis has looked increasingly prescient, was on Bloomberg this week pointing to a stat that should stop bears cold: the equal-weighted S&P 500 is up 15% this year versus roughly 12-13% for the cap-weighted index. That is not a concentrated momentum trade. That is a broad-based bull market.

Yardeni calls it FIMO, fabulous earnings momentum, not the valuation-expansion sugar rush critics feared. The forward P/E is holding steady around 20x, and sectors like financials, industrials, and healthcare are all printing all-time highs. Keith Learner of Truist, also speaking on Bloomberg Surveillance, noted that a remarkable 85% of S&P 500 companies beat earnings estimates this season. When nearly nine in ten public companies top expectations, calling this a narrow tape is a hard argument to make.

The AI narrative got its own reality check this week, and it passed. CoreWeave ($CRWV) surged on earnings with a $104 billion sales backlog and 74% gross margins, proving that hyperscaler capex is converting into real revenue rather than vaporware. Super Micro Computer ($SMCI) followed with sales nearly doubling in its fiscal fourth quarter. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index jumped 3% on the day, led by Micron up 6.5%. Goldman Sachs, meanwhile, dropped $2.3 billion to acquire active ETF manager Neos, a pointed bet that retail investors will keep rotating from mutual funds into active ETFs at the current torrid pace.

The bear case is not invisible. Learner flagged a potentially bumpy second half ahead, citing oil price uncertainty, the incoming Fed chair transition to Kevin Warsh (who Yardeni expects to hike in September), and midterm election seasonality. And there is a real concentration risk buried in the AI trade, with critics noting that an estimated 70% of Microsoft's AI revenue in fiscal 2026 came from OpenAI alone. If that relationship ever curdles, the ripple effects would be ugly.

But here is the thing about the bear case right now: it keeps requiring you to ignore the data in front of you. July CPI came in at 3.4% year-over-year, matching expectations and ticking down from 3.5%. Core CPI held at 2.5% for the fourth time in recent months, exactly where the Fed wants to see it drift. The energy shock from the Iran conflict faded enough in July to keep inflation tame, and markets responded predictably, with the Nasdaq up half a percent and JP Morgan, Bank of America, Marathon Petroleum, Phillips 66, and Valero all hitting fresh all-time highs on Wednesday alone.

The breadth is real, the earnings are real, and the macro is cooperating. The only thing missing is permission to believe it.