The seemingly-invincible US stock markets powered higher again last year, still directly fueled by the Fed’s epic quantitative-easing money printing. But 2015 is shaping up to be radically different from the past couple years. The Fed effectively abandoned the stock markets when it terminated its bond buying late last year. So this year we will finally see if these lofty stock markets can remain afloat without the Fed.
Mainstream stock investors and speculators are certainly loving life these days. The flagship S&P 500 stock index enjoyed an excellent 2014, climbing 11.4%. And that followed 2013’s massive and amazing 29.6% blast higher! The last couple years were truly extraordinary and record-breaking on many fronts, with the US stock markets essentially doing nothing but rally to an endless streak of new nominal record highs.
Such anomalously-one-sided stock markets naturally bred the extreme euphoria universally evident today. Greedy traders have totally forgotten the endlessly-cyclical nature of stock-market history, where bear markets always follow bulls. They’ve convinced themselves that these stock markets can keep on magically levitating indefinitely, that major selloffs of any magnitude are no longer a threat worth considering.
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