Brett Ewing, Chief Market Strategist of First Franklin Financial Services, featured on Business Insider

Business Insider – June 15, 2024 – Article: Elevated interest rates are creating the best entry point in decades for a severely discounted index expected to see an explosive upside of up to 100% as rates drop.

Excerpt: “If you look at the market, what is it telling you? It’s looking past that, and it’s saying, ‘Look, you’ve taken five rate cuts away from us already this year, and we’re still going to rally,'” said Ewing. “We’re in the second year of a bull market. The bull market started on October 22, and we believe it has a lot of legs. We think this market could melt up. It wouldn’t surprise me to see the S&P 500 over 5,800 this year.”

While both are bullish, they differ in their expectations about which part of the market will continue the uptrend. The equal-weighted S&P 500 has been flat, up by only 3.68% year to date. Ewing expects that a broadening out of the market will carry the index higher.

“The valuation ratio from small caps to large caps right now is at a 24-year low. This is probably one of the best entry points into small and mid-cap stocks,” Ewing said. “We’re stock pickers. We’re a bottom-up firm, so that’s the arena we’re kind of looking at right now. But you haven’t had an entry point into small and mid-cap stocks like this in decades.”