After being down 7% on the year at the end of March, the S&P 500 is now up almost 9% in 2026.
The bull market marches on.
As the AI trade shifts into overdrive and the market moves on from geopolitical concerns almost immediately, it’s worth considering the potential for a market melt-up.
Maybe it’s already here?
These are the one year returns for various segments of the stock market:
Not bad but these things happen, especially coming out of a decent-sized correction from the Liberation Day sell-off.
But there are a ton of charts out there where prices are going vertical.
Look at Intel:
The stock was getting killed, down more than 70%. Now it’s raced back to new highs in the blink of an eye, up almost 500% over the past year.
How about Sandisk?
In the past year the data storage company is up more the 4,100%. In one year! This year alone SNDK has risen 558%. It’s May.
Sandisk was a spin-off of Western Digital, another stock that’s going straight up:
This stock is up nearly 1,000% over the past 12 months.
Micron also looks like it’s going to the moon:
Shares are up a cool 777% since last spring.
Broadcom has grown 850% in the past 5 years:
Many of these stocks are semiconductors which is why semiconductors as a group have also headed much, much higher:
According to Bespoke Investment Group, semiconductor stocks made up just 6% of the S&P 500 at the lows last April. Today it’s 22%. Wow.
How about a country?
Look at South Korean stocks:
Off like a rocketship.
That’s a 240% return in a year for one of the largest developed markets in the world.
The stock market in South Korea is now larger than that of the United Kingdom! Unreal.
It helps that around 50% of the index is in just two AI-linked names — SK Hynix and Samsung — and those two stocks are going bonkers.
Now look at another chart that’s going vertical — the earnings expectations for the South Korean index:
Perhaps the craziest thing about the current market run is how much of it is being fueled by the fundamentals. Earnings are going higher so stocks are too.
What a concept.
Every time there is a pocket of the market that’s propelled higher it feels like we’re in the 9th inning of the bull market.
We might be in the bottom of the 23rd at this point based on all of those failed predictions.
Here’s an updated version of a melt-up chart I wrote about last year:
At the time, the Nasdaq 100 was up 512% over the previous 10 years. Now it’s up almost 650% over the past 10 years.
This is certainly starting to feel like a melt-up.
The crazy thing is we haven’t even gotten to the robot phase of the AI buildout.
Meir Statman once wrote, “The market might be crazy, but that doesn’t make you a psychologist.”
Certain parts of the stock market have started to act and feel crazy.
That doesn’t mean it can’t get even crazier from here.
Further Reading:
Don’t Fight the Stock Market
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