Why record highs are buying opportunities
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All-time highs beget all-time highs. That's the takeaway from BNY Wealth's chart of the week.
Why it matters: The S&P 500 just notched yet another record high for 2025. For those afraid of buying the highs, it turns out, buying into rallies can be just as lucrative, if not more, than buying at any other time period.
The big picture: As BNY notes, forward returns for investors who bought the S&P 500 right after it notched a record high are slightly better than those for investors who bought the index after any other trading day.
Between the lines: For all the tariff-driven fears, market technicals indicate that the path of least resistance is up when the market is already, well, up.
By the numbers: The S&P 500 is up more than 25% over the past three months, ranking among the top six strongest short-term rallies in history, according to data from Ryan Detrick, chief market technician at the Carson Group.
- In the five previous cases, the market was never down one year later.
- The average 12-month gain after those rallies? +22%.
Bottom line: Strategists would remind us that fundamentals can't be forgotten when looking at technicals.
- Technicians would point to a chart and add that stocks, over time, go up.
