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5 ways today's record-setting stock market is reminiscent of the dot-com era

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Silver Bull and Bear on Newspaper
Bulls have beaten bears so far this year, but JPMorgan warns investors may be getting ahead of themselves.Getty Images
  • Today's market is showing striking similarities to the dot-com bubble, JPMorgan said in a note.

  • Current top 10 stocks actually have more risk exposure and are more concentrated than in 2000.

  • Valuations, price performance, and earnings also show worrying trends.

The stock market's endless upside may excite investors to keep piling in, but equity conditions resemble those that preceded the tech crash of the early 2000's, JPMorgan outlined in a Tuesday note.

"When viewed in a historical context, parallels to the 'Dotcom Bubble' era are often dismissed due to the 'irrational exuberance' that characterized this period," analysts led by Khuram Chaudhry wrote, adding: 'Our analysis shows that while there are notable differences, they are far more similar than one may think!'

Here are six concerning signs that the modern market is not so different from the one that preceded the Dot-Com Bubble.

Market composition

The sector allocation of today's 10 largest stocks by market cap is worse than that of the dot-com period, when tech held an outsized dominance on the market, JPMorgan wrote. Current allocation is actually less diverse; there are now only four sectors represented across the top 10, compared to a historic average of six.

There's also less diversification amid the largest stocks themselves. For instance, just Apple and Microsoft make up 40% of today's top 10 names, while all the rest still share some tech theme exposure.

Factor exposure

Factor profiles between the two periods are "eerily similar," JPMorgan said.

Both in the early 2000's and today, the biggest names were characterized by high quality, rising momentum, and negative value. However, dot-com era stocks had higher growth exposure, which signals a more supportive backdrop compared to today, meaning stocks are more prone to risk right now.

"A good way to describe the current Top 10's factor profile would be 'Quality at a not so reasonable price,'" the note said.

Price performance

It's becoming increasingly likelier that the broader market today could soon outperform the top 10.

This commonly happens after an outperformance spike, like the one the largest stocks on the market enjoyed in 2023. The S&P 500's top seven firms alone were responsible for over 60% of the index's gains last year. But this year could bring a reversion to the mean, JPMorgan warned.

"Of course, mean reversion can also occur from data dropping out of the YoY time-frame; However, given the magnitude nature of recent moves as well as the extremes in equity positioning, we do expect equity market drawdowns to materialize, which may well be driven by weakness in the top 10," the note read.