I think the virus may have been a small part of the catalyst but it's not the driver. The driver is the market does what it does, algo driven.
The market isn't driven by algorithms. It's driven by the sentiment of investors. Especially large institutional investors. They do not make the largest decisions based on algorithms and technical analysis. It doesn't even make sense to say that qualitative data like news stories is traded by an algorithm.
in terms of global trends many people are in my opinon far too optimistic about the future. it's not clear to me what from history would support this idea. the concept of a passive agent looking for statistical corrrelations is for the birds im afraid. we are heading very rapidly towards a very dark place. as usual it will be far worse than the conspircay theorists,science fiction writers etc predict
stock don't go up most stock go banrupt or taken over over time indices go up as new stronger companies replace weak although it is not a case in Japan where central bank multi decade zero interest rates zombified most of the economy and it can become case in USA and Europe too as it seems central banks want to defend status quo what ever it takes yes, they can buy stocks directly but it will just make matters worse for a wide economy
Yea stock indices go up over time. That's what I meant. Nikkei has gone up 2.5x since the Recession. Japan's real GDP also consistently rises.
@TommyR was talking about humanity and you about stock market in the last 100 years, a very recent blip in history, completely different.