October 28, 2018 | Would-Be Market Collapse Has Turned into a Yawner

After the initial, exhilarating plunge on October 10, bears have struggled for every dime of additional gains. The herky-jerky downtrend since, far from being a collapse, has been a yawner that will have instilled precious little fear on Wall Street or elsewhere. The current mood of traders is nicely captured in a think-piece by my colleague Wolf Richter. As he notes, the buy-the-dip mentality and corporate share buybacks seem ample to keep stocks buoyant more or less indefinitely. When we start entertaining such thoughts seriously, it’s  a good time to recall the observation for which Prof. Irving Fisher will always be remembered — i.e., that stocks, in early September 1929, had reached “a permanently high plateau.” Such thoughts will never go completely out of style, even if the treacherous currents of history have swept investors who believed them onto the rocks time and again.

Rick Ackerman October 28th, 2018

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