The S&P 500's New All-Time High Just Doesn't Feel Right, And That's OK

Investors are cheering the S&P 500’s first new all-time high in more than a year this week, but The Irrelevant Investor’s Michael Batnick is having a difficult time celebrating the occasion. According to Batnick, the recent market moves have made him very uncomfortable.

“It just doesn’t feel like things are better than ever before, which is why fresh all-time highs can be so confounding,” Batnick wrote in a new blog post.

The Reformed Broker’s Josh Brown spelled out a number of troubling market developments.

“International stocks are deteriorating. The banks don’t look healthy. The mutual fund flows are all negative, for months and months at a time… Commodity weakness too,” Brown listed off along with a number of other current market problems.

And yet, here we are.

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Ironically, this type of skepticism is one of the hallmarks of a bull market and could be a solid indication that the current bull run has not quite reached its peak just yet.

In the meantime, long-term investors like Batnick are left to fidget in their chairs as they sit on their hands every time the market starts to dip.

“This is the single greatest challenge long-term investors face: finding new reasons not to sell,” Batnick concluded. “It isn’t simply doing nothing; it’s constantly making the decision to stick with the plan you put in place at higher prices.”

After this week’s push to new all-time highs, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE: SPY) is now up 5.2 percent year-to-date.

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Disclosure: The author holds no position in the stocks mentioned.