Top 4 hurdles stocks will face this spring

With one quarter down and three to go, the stock market is behaving pretty much like it has most other years after spectacular gains — meh.

With a 30 percent gain for the S&P 500, 2013 qualified as one of the 10 best years for stocks in the past century and the best since 1997.

Typically, such blockbuster performances are followed by mediocre gains the following year, with the market averaging just a 5.5 percent advance in the next 12 months.

But so far, 2014 isn’t even keeping up that slow jogging pace.

As we go into the final trading day of the quarter with the Dow, S&P and Nasdaq each basically flat on the year. And with the bull market decidedly long in the tooth (it’s the fourth-longest in the postwar era), spring will bring fresh hurdles for stocks, among them:

Oil Prices

While rising oil prices can often signal a strong global economy, spikes due to geopolitical concerns are more troubling, and that’s what’s been happening so far in 2014. With Russian troops massed along the eastern border of Ukraine, oil prices have risen 5 percent this year on top of a 7 percent gain in 2013.

Earnings

As we head into the first-quarter earnings season, more than 100 companies have already warned of earnings shortfalls. Expect many more and frequent finger-pointing at this winter’s “polar vortex” as the culprit.

Are IPOs OK?

The disastrous performance of King Digital, owner of the “Candy Crush” game, on its first day of trading Thursday has cast a pall over the once red-hot initial public offering market. The price and timing of the debuts of Alibaba and Spotify in coming months will now be seen as a litmus test of investors’ appetite for risk.

The 1 percent stocks

2013’s high-fliers, mostly companies that cater to the 1 percent (or perhaps the 10 percent) have taken a huge drubbing of late, with Netflix down 21 percent from its all-time high, Tesla off 19 percent and Lululemon squeezed by 36 percent. The tired bull will have to find new leadership to resume its climb.

So there you have it: A wall of worries the bull market will have to continue to climb.

The next few months may be its biggest challenge.