It may be premature to turn bullish.
Despite Monday’s massive rally, Canaccord Genuity’s Tony Dwyer finds stocks haven’t broken out of the ‘”frustration” stage of the recovery.
He breaks down the post-market crash environment into three phases: Panic, relief and frustration.
“Once you crash, you go into a panic phase,” the firm’s chief market strategist told CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Monday. “You get this incredible decline, this panic. The market gets so historically oversold that it sets itself up for a counter trend rally, a relief rally.”
The March 23 market low sparked the 2020 relief rally, according to Dwyer. Since then, the S&P 500 and Dow have soared 35% while the tech-heavy Nasdaq has surged almost 40%.
In the current frustration phase, Dwyer notes market often fluctuates between two extremes: Either feels like it’s going to crash or go up in a straight line.
“It’s one of those frustrating times where you’re not sure exactly what to do in the split between angst and Fed optimism,” he said.
Even though there’s confusion on Wall Street, Dwyer sees hints that a more sustainable trend may be starting to form.
“You’re finally getting a movement into economically sensitive areas rather than a Covid-19 trade,” Dwyer said. “However, you want to see something more than a day or two.”
The key, according to Dwyer, is to see economically sensitive groups such as banks, industrials and consumer discretionary take the lead. He sees the latest optimistic vaccine potentially serving as the catalyst to break stocks out of the frustration phase.
“We are market neutral. We’ve been waiting for this kind of market rotation to happen. We want to see a little bit more of a trend,” he added. “If we continue to see leadership coming out of these economically sectors as well as the credit markets, it would suggest some more tactical upside.”