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By Bloomberg

Not enough stocks in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index have reversed their bull market trajectory to compare 2015 with past peaks, according to Strategas Research Partners.

“More than 70 percent of the S&P is still in an uptrend,” Chris Verrone, head of technical analysis at the New York-based firm, said Thursday. “The backdrop is still a lot firmer than what we saw in 2000 or 2007.”

Strategas focused on a version of market breadth amid a six-year rally whose defining characteristic has been the large number of companies participating. Among other measures, indexes of equities that strip out market-value biases have consistently beaten gauges such as the S&P 500 over the period, a sign that gains have been evenly distributed.

The firm’s study compares the number of companies in an uptrend, a term of technical analysis whose definition varies but which the New York-based firm calculates by plotting stocks against moving averages, among other things. More than 70 percent of the S&P 500 is currently in one, it found. That compares to 43 percent in October 2007 and 27 percent at the index’s March 2000 peak.

Market History

Bolstered by Federal Reserve stimulus and a doubling in corporate profits, the S&P 500 has more than tripled since 2009. The current run, lasting more than 2,200 days, is about a month away from overtaking the 1974-1980 bull market as the third- longest since 1929.

U.S. stock-index futures rose 0.1 percent at 8:29 a.m. in New York. The S&P 500 is on track for a 1.2 percent increase for the week.

Gains that stretch across stocks or industries are usually welcomed by technical analysts and investors as signs growth is pervading different areas of the economy. To Peter Jankovskis, who helps oversee $1.9 billion as co-chief investment officer of Lisle, Illinois-based OakBrook Investments LLC, it shows the market isn’t depending on too few stocks.

“Breadth helps provides comfort,” Jankovskis said by phone. “Mania or bubble-type behavior seems more likely when the market is narrowly focused.”

About 66 percent of stocks in the S&P are above their average price in the last 200 days, compared with 60 percent at the market’s top in 2007 and 34 percent in 2000, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. As it has in five of six years since 2009, the S&P 500 equal-weight index is beating its market- weighted cousin, rising 2.6 percent since December.

Bull Market

While the equal-weight index also beat the S&P 500 during the five-year bull market that ended on Oct. 9, 2007, the advantage disappeared in the final year. At the market’s peak, the S&P 500 was up 10.4 percent year-to-date compared with 8.8 percent for the equal-weight.

The bull market that ended in 2000 was marked by the concentration of gains in an ever-shrinking pool of stocks such as Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. The capitalization- based S&P 500 beat the unweighted version every calendar year from 1995 to 1999, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

“It would be a mistake to try and call some major top before we see a broader deterioration,” Verrone said. “The market is in good hands today.”