Wall Street and investors have been taken for quite the ride over the past two months. In that span, uncertainties tied to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) wound up pushing equities into their fastest bear market in history, with the benchmark S&P 500 losing a whopping 34% of its value in a mere 33 calendar days.
We also witnessed record-breaking volatility, with the CBOE Volatility Index registering its highest reading ever, and the S&P 500 logging its eight-largest single-day point gains, as well as 10 of its 13-biggest single-session point declines, in history.
While predicting short-term movements in the stock market is more luck than science, I'm of the belief that this rebound isn't sustainable. Without the ability to step over Wall Street's low-bar earnings estimates for the first quarter, investors are really going to be forced to focus on what could be ugly year-over-year operating comparisons. That makes further downside in the stock market likely, in my view.