There has been a fair amount of nervous chatter lately about the state of the stock market. It's true that market leadership is narrow and a handful of tech and artificial intelligence names account for most of this year's gains for the S & P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite — and the indexes' recent runs to all-time highs. But it's also true — at least for now — that this narrow leadership doesn't really matter. This is a bull market, and it is a world beater.
The alarm bells that rang in my ears in 1999 and sounded again in 2007 amid the real estate and credit market bubbles aren't going off today — at least not yet. Different circumstances this time With both interest rates and energy prices reasonably well-behaved, the economy remaining resilient and inflation rates ebbing, it's hard to get terribly bearish. This is especially because the next interest rate move by the Federal Reserve is more likely to be a cut rather than a hike.