Stock Market Outlook 2025: Can the Bull Run Persist?

Feb 19, 2025

After two strong years for stocks, more muted gains are likely in 2025, with opportunities in U.S. stocks, growth and value.

Key Takeaways

  • Following two strong years, further stock market gains are likely in 2025 but may be more muted. 

  • Continued adoption of artificial intelligence could lead to a productivity boom, as in the late 90’s. 

  • In terms of investment region and style, investors can consider U.S. equities and both value and growth stocks among areas of opportunity in 2025. 

  • Investors should watch for signs of market euphoria, including sustained retail stock purchases and aggressively positive net fund flows near 2021 levels. 

Can the bull run in equity markets persist for a third year in 2025? Returns for the S&P 500 Index have topped 25% for two years in a row, creating concerns about whether stocks are overvalued. Historically, however, while the third year of a bull market produces only a mediocre return on average, it is typically not negative.1

 

There could be a scenario in which 2025 earnings-per-share growth exceeds market returns, pulling the market's overall price-earnings valuation down. With enough negatives out there, including higher-for-longer interest rates and geopolitical noise, to cause a subpar year, the recently minted optimists could revert to being skeptics, only to have the market roar again in 2026. In that case, 2025 could be more of a pause year than anything more sinister.


Watch Investors’ Behavior

Investor behavior over the past several years looks a lot like it has in previous bull markets, and following such patterns can be one of the most consistent ways to nurture portfolio outperformance. While investors may act irrationally at times, their irrationality is usually consistent. The famed investor Sir John Templeton captured the idea that investor psychology plays a large role in market cycles in this 1966 quote: “Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism, and die on euphoria.” In the current cycle, investors have moved through the first two stages of a bull market just as Templeton would have expected:

 

  • Pessimism was certainly a feature of the first year of the current bull market (beginning following the bear market drawdown at the end of September 2022). Consistent with historic patterns, retail investors were net sellers, and Wall Street strategists began 2023 forecasting a 4% gain for the S&P 500—a significant undershoot. 
 
  • Skepticism reigned in the second year of the bull market, keeping retail investors from adding significantly to their equity portfolios even as stocks soared; strategists continued to forecast only tiny gains.
 
  • Optimism emerged as 2024 ended and the bull market entered its third year, with retail fund flows finally turning more strongly positive and Wall Street prognosticators adjusting their forecasts to become bullish about 2025, implying double-digit gains.

 

The Potential Impact of AI

The third year after a 25% or more market decline—which is where the market stands now—tends to produce a positive, but muted return. However, what has the potential to lead to a longer or stronger stock market rally is a huge commercial embrace of artificial intelligence and resulting productivity boom, similar to what happened with the Internet in the late 1990s. This alternative scenario is bolstered by the inauguration of a new President who, through significant investment, clearly intends to ensure the U.S. remains the AI leader. Some historical data to consider:

 

  1. While two back-to-back 20%+ return years have tended to produce a lackluster third year, the late 1990s were an exception.
  2. After two great 20% years in 1995 and 1996, there was no pause. Instead, the S&P 500 roared higher in 1997 (+33%), 1998 (+29%) and 1999 (+21%).2

 

To be clear, I am not suggesting a 67% return for the S&P 500 over the next three years. It remains to be seen how the broader application of AI technologies within corporations will affect their bottom lines. But the Law of Accelerating Returns demonstrates the tendency for technological advances to feed on themselves, increasing the rate of further advance, and pushing well past what one might sensibly project by linear extrapolation of current progress.3 The embrace of AI could ultimately enhance margins and profitability for a broad swath of companies in many different industries.

 

U.S. Stocks, Growth and Value

In terms of investment styles and regions, these themes stand out for stock opportunities in 2025.

 

  • Growth and value stocks: Currently, big tech is heavily owned individually and within the indices. This ultimately can result in big swoons when news, such as the introduction of a Chinese large language model, comes out like it did in the last week of January. However, I wouldn't actively bet against the major tech companies that comprise the biggest weights in the S&P 500. When the dotcom bubble peaked in 2000, the big titans of that era traded at 50-75x forward price-to-earnings ratios. Today, most of the mega-caps trade at roughly a 50% discount to these previous peak multiples.4 Additionally, investors should consider more than simply growth equities, especially financials. Combined with industrials, we currently favor a balance between growth and value stocks.
 
  • U.S. stocks: I often hear the comment, “the rest of the world is cheaper,” implying that investors should seek opportunities outside the U.S. Broadly speaking, however, stocks that have the level of profitability and growth commensurate with those in the U.S. are not cheaper. Rather, there are simply many less-profitable companies outside the U.S than inside the U.S. Therefore, rather than taking strong regional non-U.S. bets, we actively seek stock-specific opportunities outside the U.S. representing companies we want to own.

 

Watch for Investor Euphoria

Investors should become cautious when the market reaches the euphoria state, but it does not seem to be near that point yet. One indicator would be sustained stock purchases by individual investors, thus meriting caution. So far, while net fund flows have ticked higher than the first two early-stage bull market years, they are not near levels seen for all of 2021. In the last six months of 2024, net fund flows totaled less than $100 billion, versus $1.2 trillion net flows in 2021, which was the last time there were clear signs of exuberance. Ultimately, the Fed could help determine how quickly this bull market runs its course. If policymakers cut rates more slowly, it could extend the optimism phase. More aggressive easing could help tip the market into euphoria.

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