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Seems like a flat market has become the new normal over the years and no reversal is even expected in the near future.
I think flat would be nice. The concern is that we see a major correction. The Shiller CAPE ratio has only ever been higher two times before, once before the 1930's crash and the other during the irrational exuberance just before the dot.com crash. See
https://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe - did anyone say Netflix, UBER etc.... Definitely heard that language before i.e. we operate on negative margins but we make up for it with eyeballs / volumes.... yeah right....
Some are talking 1930's depression again. I realise I've held a contrarian bearish "anti-investor" approach for some time, preferring to trade the swings and re-invest my profits. This means I often get to ride the same price moves up and down, two or three times. I'm completely price agnostic at all times.
My view is that governments and banks got bailed out in 2007/2008. Then more money than the world has ever known got printed. Where did it go? To the super wealthy of course, initially via the FED and the bond market, taking US debt to over $22-trn now. Note how the Chinese, Japanese and other traditionally large US treasury buyers have stopped buying and are turning to gold instead.... But for central banks their gold holdings are simply a nice way to earn annuity returns i.e. playing gold loans vs. interest rate swaps.
The super wealthy, clever money has also definitely been leaving the market of late, along with those baby-boomer pension funds, now all retiring. But you can't see them. Why? Because all those bucketloads of money have ultimately also found their way to companies, and those companies cannot find any value in the market, just like Warren Buffet sitting on oodles of cash reserves. So what do they do to appease their stockholders? They've been buying their own stocks back, keeping prices afloat. Of course the largely uninformed middle classes have also been buying stocks like there's no tomorrow. Because of course stocks always keep going up.... right? So whilst banks and governments got taken out in 2007/2008 we now need to see ordinary stockholders and companies get taken out, to restore the balance a little and help wipe out that massive excess of printed money.
I doubt the US will default as they will simply go after people's pensions first i.e. take away social security (it goes bust circa 2030 anyway) and replace it with a basic income grant instead. Either way, we are heading for interesting times. The top 1% will of course do just fine. Warren Buffett also has his put options and others have largely diversified into gold, properties, farms with water, rare collectibles etc.
Having said all that, the Dow has had a nice retracement on May's drop and looks like it could run further still to 27,000. Then however things should get very interesting. Will there be enough steam and momentum to push it higher or will we start to see the cracks? We haven't had a decent market correction for over 10 years now. This next one could be dramatic because I don't see anyone prepared to step in and save markets this time...
