A historic rally for the S&P 500 is just getting started, says Wall Street veteran who called the April 2025 bottom

By Barbara Kollmeyer

Milton Berg sees bullish signals pointing to bigger gains ahead

Wall Street veteran Milton Berg says there's no reason to doubt this stock-market rally.

A fresh high for the S&P 500 might be winning over some doubters, but Wall Street veteran Milton Berg needs no convincing.

"There's no reason at all to doubt this rally," the CEO of Milton Berg Advisors told MarketWatch in an interview this week. "This is a buying opportunity, and it's late now, because now we're at new highs, but the pullback is a buying opportunity, and the breakouts to new highs are also a buying opportunity,"

Berg's nearly 50-year Wall Street career includes advising big-name investors Stanley Druckenmiller and George Soros and earning the honor of co-mutual fund manager of the year in 1987 for navigating the market crash. He made a contrarian bull-market call in January 2023 and nailed the stock-market bottom in April 2025.

He argues the current bull market is intact mainly because there is fundamentally no recession, while the Fed isn't tightening and inflation is "always good for markets where the Fed isn't fighting it." Finally, the market action itself speaks volumes.

Of the recent "serious" correction, he says such events are normal. "It's crazy to think this serious correction is the start of a new bear market. Usually you don't get a second bear market from one year over a major bottom."

Berg leans on historical data over "meaningless" opinions about the war or oil prices, and watches 30,000 individual indicators to get 2,000 action-based models, looking for market trends.

He's been advising institutional investors since 2012 and in January started a $10-a-month service for retail investors that keeps things simple. Those investors are either told to go long on the S&P 500 via ETFs such as State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY and Vanguard S&P 500 ETF VOO or move to cash. He notes that over 75 years or so, buy signals have tended to last 1.25 years.

His April 2025 bottom call was the product of 80 buy signals that told him the S&P 500 would reach 7,437 and 7,399 within a year. That the target hasn't been met isn't that important.

"The key isn't our projection. The key is our direction. Once investors get long in April of last year, it really doesn't matter if we're up to 6,500 or 7,900. As long as you're long for that move, they made money."

He's got fewer buy signals for the current rally, but those signals are predicting the S&P will reach a minimum of 7,639.69 within a year, and 8,499 at the median, roughly 19% above Wednesday's close.

The signal for retail investors to buy came April 10, stemming from a rare pattern, in which the Nasdaq-100 QQQ rose for eight straight sessions, from March 31 to April 10, after a decline of more than 12%. Berg notes only three such instances in the past, with corresponding gains of 35.10%, 33.6% and 9.55% before the next pullback.

Nasdaq 100 gives off a buy signal.

"The bears are telling you that this is only the top, but we have so many indicators that turned bullish," he says. "We're going with what the market is telling us rather than what the economists are telling us."

He flags another interesting indicator that popped up April 15, when the S&P 500 made a new all-time high but only 15 stocks hit 52-week highs. Looking at history, the same set-up appeared on Feb. 10, 1995 - the index was exiting a correction and went up another 40% without a pullback.

Berg says that was significant because it showed that 485 stocks were unable to drag down the index.

Another recent feat? "Never in history has the S&P 500 ever made a one-year high, on the 12th day past a 9% correction. So this rally off the latest low is historic."

Berg flags some stocks he's picked up recently: Woodward (WWD), TTM Technologies (TTMI), Seagate Technology (STX), Celestica (CLS), Lam Research (LRCX) and Fabrinet (FN). Interactive Brokers (IBKR) and Futu Holdings (FUTU) are some of his longer holds.

"We diversify, and we buy stocks based on earnings streams and on a combination of earnings and pattern analysis," says Berg. The hunt is not for cheap stocks; it's for those "that are already acting well."

The markets

U.S. stocks DJIA SPX COMP are down, as oil prices (CL.1) (BRN00) rise, and the 10-year Treasury yield BX:TMUBMUSD10Y is down.

   Key asset performance                                                Last       5d      1m      YTD     1y 
   S&P 500                                                              7137.9     1.64%   8.28%   4.27%   32.78% 
   Nasdaq Composite                                                     24,657.57  2.67%   12.44%  6.09%   47.58% 
   10-year Treasury                                                     4.325      0.50    -9.90   15.30   0.00 
   Gold                                                                 4716.5     -1.96%  7.77%   8.87%   40.32% 
   Oil                                                                  94.74      5.68%   1.02%   65.02%  50.93% 
   Data: MarketWatch. Treasury yields change expressed in basis points 

The buzz

President Donald Trump said he ordered the Navy to shoot and kill any mine-laying boats in the Strait of Homuz. Mediators hope to get U.S. and Iran back to the negotiating table by Friday, amid a stalemate.

Tesla earnings and sales narrowly beat forecasts, but shares (TSLA) are down after the company revealed plans to spend $25 billion this year.

Intel shares (INTC) are up after Tesla CEO Elon Musk said his company will use Intel technology for a research chip factory. Intel results are due after the close. Follow our live coverage.

Texas Instruments stock (TXN) is up on forecast-beating results and guidance.

IBM shares (IBM) are falling on weak software revenue.

ServiceNow (NOW) is dropping after the software company cut margin guidance.

Honeywell shares (HON) are falling after mixed results from the defense group, including a sales miss.

American Airlines stock (AAL) is rallying on record revenue and expectatoins for travel to keep growing even as costs rise.

Weekly jobless claims came in at 214,000 slightly higher than expected. The S&P's flash services and manufacturing PMIs at 9:45 a.m.

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The chart

"Since the mid-1980s, rising dividends and buybacks relative to internal funds (for nonfinancial corporations) has driven equity market values higher relative to corporate net worth," writes Steven Blitz, chief U.S. economist at GlobalData TS Lombard. He argues tariffs and redirection of trade may cut into companies' excess cash, threatening the dividend/buyback driver. Companies are "keeping up appearances," by hiring less and trying to sell a positive story, he suspects. Rising 10-year yields BX:TMUBMUSD10Y may also prove competition for stocks, Blitz said.

Top tickers

These were the top-searched tickers on MarketWatch as of 6 a.m.:

   Ticker  Security name 
   TSLA    Tesla 
   GME     GameStop 
   NVDA    Nvidia 
   AMD     Advanced Micro Devices 
   AMZN    Amazon.com 
   TSM     Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing 
   MSFT    Microsoft 
   AAPL    Apple 
   BYND    Beyond Meat 
   MU      Micron Technology 

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-Barbara Kollmeyer

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04-23-26 0939ET