The S&P 500 closed at a record high this week, its first in two months. BTIG data cited by investor Michael Burry shows the four-day rally behind it has only happened three times before.
Two of those three prior instances landed right around the dot-com bubble’s 2000 peak. That timing has caught traders’ attention this week.
A Rare Pattern for the S&P 500
The S&P 500 gained 1.79% Tuesday to close at 7,736.52, its highest level since June. Strong earnings and easing Middle East tensions drove the move. Wednesday brought a mixed follow-through. The S&P 500 and Dow both touched fresh intraday records in early trading before the mood shifted.
The Dow closed at a record for a fifth straight session, adding 263 points to reach 54,349. The S&P 500, however, slipped 0.17% to 7,723.55, snapping its four-day win streak.
That record capped a four-day, 5% surge, a move BTIG’s Jonathan Krinsky tracked in his own research. Burry credited Krinsky directly while sharing the data.
Burry wrote about the pattern on his Substack this week.
“Thanks to Jonathan Krinsky at BTIG, we know that the S&P 500 has surged 5% over four trading days to a new high only three times other than today.”
— Burry
Those three prior dates were April 23, 1999, March 21, 2000, and November 9, 2020. Therefore, two sit right at the dot-com bubble’s peak and its early unwind.
Wall Street Still Split on the Next Leg
Not every strategist reads the setup as a warning sign. In contrast, Yardeni Research’s year-end S&P 500 target sits at 8,250, up from 7,700 earlier this year. He told CNBC that figure could prove too conservative given how strong earnings have been.
Goldman Sachs President John Waldron pointed to broadening profit growth beyond technology. He called it the market’s key fundamental driver right now.
However, Waldron also flagged a real risk underneath that optimism. Meanwhile, the cap-weighted S&P 500 has outperformed its equal-weighted counterpart by roughly 4% over the past several days.
That gap suggests market leadership may be narrowing again. It echoes the concentration debate already visible in the index’s AI-driven gains earlier this year.
The rally’s four-day win streak, which snapped Wednesday when the index touched a fresh intraday high but closed slightly lower, makes Burry’s historical parallel a live test rather than a hypothetical.
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