Easy money and plentiful liquidity are the market’s drug, and when they’re taken away, withdrawal will be rough. Financial conditions are historically loose and monetary policy accommodative, and now the central bank is pumping billions of dollars worth of liquidity into financial markets to keep short-term funding markets tame.
NEW YORK: It’s that time of the bull market again, when everyone decides things beyond the realm of rationality have taken over in equities. Demand is brisk for an account of all the ways investors have lost their minds.
Concern is normal whenever the market is buoyant. When it’s 11 years into a massive rally and share values soar by $1 trillion in two weeks, skeptics come out of the woodwork. Records keep falling -- the S&P 500 is setting one every 2 1/2 days -- while valuations fatten. It’s enough to make the staunchest bull wonder about a reckoning.
