S&P 500: Bull/Bear scorecard reads like 2015, not 2022...State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETFBATS:SPYIvanLabrieI learned to think about markets as a tug-of-war between competing bull and bear factors from Tim West (@timwest) right here on TradingView. Instead of building a narrative around one indicator, you lay out everything pulling in each direction and see where the weight falls. I've been running a version of this scorecard monthly. Here's April 1st. 5 Bull / 2 Bear / 11 Neutral The bulls: Consumer Confidence at 56.6, readings this depressed have historically marked sentiment troughs, not peaks. AAII Sentiment at 49.8% bearish, half the survey wants out, which is a contrarian buy signal. VIX at 24.7, real fear priced in. ISM Manufacturing PMI at 52.4, still expanding. Yield Curve at +51bps, positive slope, no inversion. The bears: Energy at $99.8, oil near triple digits squeezes consumers and margins. Trailing P/E at 25.8x, the market isn't cheap. Everything else is neutral. Eleven indicators sitting on the fence. I went back through the same indicators at every major turn since 2007. The pattern is hard to miss. What tops look like: At the Jan 2022 top, VIX was 17-20 and AAII bearish was around 30%. The Jan 2018 Volmageddon top had VIX at 9.15, close to an all-time low. Oct 2007 sat at VIX 10-16 with AAII bearish around 25-30%. Same profile every time: low VIX, low fear, everyone positioned long, nobody hedging. We are nowhere near that right now. What mid-cycle buying opportunities look like: Sep 2015, AAII bearish 48.9%. VIX settled into the 24-27 range after spiking to 40 on China's Black Monday. PMI 50.2, barely expanding. The narrative was China hard landing, first Fed hike since 2006 (man I remember it like it was yesterday), an earnings recession that turned out to be entirely energy-sector driven (ex-energy, S&P earnings grew 7.6%). The S&P returned +12% in 2016 and +22% in 2017. Dec 2018, AAII bearish around 50%. VIX hit 36 on Christmas Eve. PMI was still 54. The Fed blinked, paused hikes, and the market ripped through 2019. Oct 2022, AAII bearish above 60% for consecutive weeks, first time in survey history. VIX at 33. PMI 50.2. The S&P returned +24% in 2023. Today sits closest to September 2015. AAII is nearly identical (49.8% vs 48.9%). VIX is in the same post-spike mid-20s territory. PMI is actually stronger now at 52.4 vs 50.2. Junk spreads at 346bps show zero credit stress, in Sep 2015 they were already blowing past 550. Where the analog weakens: valuations are more stretched now (25.8x trailing vs 21.5x). The yield curve is thinner at +51bps vs +154bps. Consumer confidence at 56.6 is genuinely poor, it was around 98 in Sep 2015. And energy is working against us (oil near $100), where falling oil in 2015 actually became a consumer tailwind by mid-2016. So it's not a clean replay. The direction of the signal is the same, but the margin of safety is thinner. What I'm watching from here: PMI holding above 50 is the single most important factor. If manufacturing rolls into contraction, the mid-cycle thesis breaks. Junk spreads are the second tell, 346 is comfortable, 500+ changes the picture entirely. Five bulls against two bears, with a large neutral middle that hasn't picked a side. In my experience, the market everybody is afraid of tends to go up, and the market nobody worries about tends to go down. Right now, everybody is afraid. One observation for those who trade volatility: VIX above 24 with junk spreads below 350 and PMI above 50 is a combination where selling premium has historically paid well. Fear is priced in, but the structural damage to justify it hasn't shown up. That gap between implied and realized is where the money is. Credit to Tim West (@timwest) for the bull/bear framework that shaped how I look at markets. If you're not following his work, you should be. Best of luck! Cheers, Ivan Labrie.