In the current financial cycle, there's a bull market in superlatives. The pileup of "first time ever" and "unprecedented extremes" over the past couple of years amounts to a case that this bull is leaving truly unique hoofprints. Last Thursday, 87% of S & P 500 stocks outperformed the index itself, which Goldman Sachs called "the most in the history of our data set.
A forced flash recession and multi-week market crash was met with a spring-loaded recovery helped by massive stimulus, leaving household finances stronger at the end of the economic shock than at the start. The tendency of the largest tech platforms to dominate and perpetuate their network advantages has been a factor for a decade, allowing the winning stocks to consume a greater share of capital.