As bull markets mature, opportunities don’t disappear — they multiply. But only for the people actually paying attention.
Narratives take hold, and humans cling to them long after the market has moved on. They’ll toss out the math just to protect the story, even when the math has already proved the story wrong — or obsolete.
But rotation and expansion don’t hide. They’re right there on the charts.
You just have to look.
And here at TrendLabs, we’re really good at looking.
S&P 500 Ex-Mag 7 Hits All-Time Highs
If you want to know how the rest of the S&P 500 is doing, look at the other 493 stocks.
Yes, the index is market-cap weighted — the biggest, most important companies carry the most influence. That’s fine. That’s how it should be. Your best players should be scoring a lot of points.
But none of that changes the simple reality: This is a market of stocks, not a monolithic “stock market.”
There are more than 500 names in the S&P 500, and when you strip out the so-called “Magnificent 7,” the remaining 493 just closed at a new all-time high on Friday:
If you actually look, you’ll see just how many stocks — and how many types of stocks — are participating in this bull market.
It’s more and more of them, not fewer.
Copper Breaks Out, Latin America To Follow?
It’s not just U.S. stocks putting up big numbers.
Copper just broke out to new all-time highs, and when copper rips, my mind immediately goes to Latin America. Historically, copper and Latin American equities move together.
You can see the relationship in this chart below:
If copper is the leading indicator here, we should continue to see rotation into Latin America. On Friday, the iShares Latin America 40 ETF (ILF) closed at its highest level since the summer of 2021.
And here’s what makes this even more interesting: Latin America has zero exposure to Technology.
For context, Tech is 35% of the S&P 500 and 54% of the Nasdaq 100.
Latin America, meanwhile, is almost 40% Financials, 20% Materials, and 10% Energy.
That’s a completely different market profile from the United States, where the S&P 500 has just 1% Materials and 2% Energy. And the Nasdaq 100 has 0% in all three of Latin America’s biggest sectors — zero Financials, zero Materials, zero Energy.
In other words, Latin America is nothing like the U.S. indexes everyone obsesses over. And investors are finally starting to buy them.
We’ve been buying them too, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we add more this week.
And remember, you don’t need a foreign brokerage account to participate. Plenty of Brazilian, Mexican, Chilean, and Peruvian stocks trade right here in the U.S. just like Microsoft (MSFT) or Chevron (CVX).
The bottom line: More stocks are working, and different stocks are working — stocks that have nothing to do with AI.
But you have to actually look.
Or just come hang with me. I’ll show you.
Stay sharp,
JC Parets, CMT
Founder, TrendLabs