Robert Brokamp

That and more on this Saturday personal finance edition of Motley Fool Money.

This week I speak with Ryan Dietrich, the chief market strategist at Carson Group, and a consistent source of data about the market's past and what it could say about the future.

But first, some news from this week.

According to Callum Thomas of TopDownCharts, 80% of the 70 companies he tracks have stock markets that are up at least 20% off their 52-week lows.

He writes that this indicator has rarely been above 50% over the past couple of decades, and a surge like this is usually a good sign.

Previous spikes have happened in 2003, 2009, and 2020, which were all good times to be an investor.

Looking more locally, a recent graphic from Bloomberg illustrates that the year-to-date rally in US stocks is the broadest ever, as there's a record number of individual stocks in the S&P 500 that are outperforming the index.

That said, not every stock is doing well, including some of the biggest tech-oriented names, which has resulted in lower valuations for those stocks.

In fact, according to Matt Cermonaro of Ritholtz Wealth Management, the forward P.E.

of the MAG-7 minus Tesla is now below the forward P.E.

of the consumer staples sector, which has returned almost 15% so far this year.

Next up, mortgage rates are dropping.

The current 30-year fixed rate is 6%, down around 80 basis points from a year ago and the lowest level since 2022.

Lower rates might make homeownership more affordable for some buyers, especially as price growth is slowing.

This past week, Standard & Poor's announced that the Case-Shiller National Home Price Index rose an annualized 1.3% in December, down from 1.4% in November.

In other home loan news, a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York published on Tuesday says that the total amount in home equity lines of credit, otherwise known as HELOCs, rose in the fourth quarter of 2025, which was the 15th consecutive quarterly increase.

The total amount in HELOCs is now $434 billion, up 36% over the past four years.

According to Bankrate, the current average interest rate on a HELOC is 7.3%.

And now the number of the week, which is 12.

That is the number of calendar years that the S&P 500 has lost more than 10% since 1928, according to a report from Barry Gilbert of Carson Group.