. And all that economic “pain”? GDP’s 2.5% growth exceeds virtually all expectations, job growth is steady, unemployment down, labor participation rate up. All good. AFP via Getty Images
Regular readers know I’ve pretty much been saying this all along: no recession, modest but increasing growth, inflation normalizing, strong stock market. Pretty Goldilocks-like. And quietly but indisputably, the stock market has been loving it – despite the bears’ continued huffing and puffing. Here is the problem: When humans are wrong for such a long period of time, they lack conviction after initially entertaining an updated set of ideas. It becomes easy to re-jolt them to disbelief and panic. March 5 column
Mostly the negativity is hyperbole – multiple bouts of hand-wringing for every actual market break of short-term, downside volatility. This phase of any young bull market often has one or two short-term “breaks” per year – and they can slam stocks by as much as 10% to 20%. But it is also common for no big downside volatility.