The Stock Market Sure Is High

Exciting, the Dow closed over 20,000 yesterday for the first time in history. What is the best thing to do with this information? Uhhhhh...

SELL NOW. “ The U.S. expansion is​ more than seven years old and retains little momentum from using up spare capacity from the recession. At 4.7%, the unemployment rate is at levels the Fed considers a fully employed workforce. Indeed, recessions usually happen with unemployment around or below 5%. Eight years of ultra-easy monetary policy have left a worrisome legacy of inflated asset prices and financial engineering.”

NO, BUY. “ Perkin ticks off reasons for stock investors to stay invested. A sizable pile of investor cash still sitting on the sidelines, he says, will seek out fresh opportunities in the stock market... Other positives favoring stocks, Perkin says, include a rebound in corporate profits and a belief that U.S. economic growth under a Trump administration will continue at a modest but solid pace of 2.5% or more.”

NO, RUN. “ The closest we can come to Trump among former US presidents might be Calvin Coolidge, an extremely pro-business tax cutter... The US economy during the Coolidge administration was very successful, but the boom ended badly in 1929, just after Coolidge stepped down, with the stock-market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression.”

NO, CAST ASIDE YOUR IDOLATRY OF MONEY AND WORSHIP INSTEAD OUR COMMON HUMANITY, WHICH WE ALL SHARE EQUALLY. “ We have created new idols. The worship of the ancient golden calf has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose... While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. This imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. Consequently, they reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common good, to exercise any form of control. A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules.”

Nobody knows what the heck that stock market will do next.