Interesting clacy. I kind of doubted your numbers, so I did just some quick looking. NASDAQ in late 1999/early 2000 - on quick look it appears it topped out at roughly 3,940. NASDAQ Friday close - 7,825 DOW around same period - looks like it got up to 10,940. DOW Friday close (close to 2017 highs) - 25,019 The implied inflation rate for the NASDAQ given those numbers appears to be about 3.9%, for the DOW 4.8%. So what you said seems to be, if not entirely correct, not for off at all. Thanks so much - makes one see that we really could have a good bit more room to run to the upside - I assume 2018 earnings are much higher than 2000 earnings. Thanks!
Remember Nasdaq bull is running on only a few selected stocks.... But of course bulls would be to ignorant to even acknowledge such a fact!
so what. some out of the box thinking is needed here, which may require some understanding of the tech area... with the internet, and the upcoming AI revolution, the velocity of everything has increased, which concentrates the profit into a few dominant hands. AI also requires a critical mass of data, so the smaller guys can't touch the FAAMG. things change.... some day AMZN might break up to retail, health care, shipping, cloud... AAPL may break up into phone, wearable, music, TV.... does that make the situation any better? probably won't make any difference. the number of companies doesn't mean anything.
I know it's very difficult to get on the bull train now... but usually uncomfortable trades are good trades... and to take an extreme case, buying AMZN here is likely to be a good trade. need to observe what retail is doing as they are the best contrarian indicator.. https://www.dailyfx.com/sentiment 9:1 long/short on gold, 8:2 on bitcoin, 3:7 on sp500.... this is what dumb money is doing... and this makes buying equity here a safe bet..... these ratios are the results of seeking comfort... and inevitably the wall street wolves will see this and come kill the sheep.... the next major moves on gold and bitcoin will be down, without doubt... the next major move on equity will likely be up (likely because 3:7 is not too extreme)
+1 exactly, it's in doing what feels wrong where the profit is (grossly generalizing, but reasonable for a one liner).
everyone's feel is different... but generally the inexperienced public (aka dumb money) feel the same way.. and an uncomfortable trade means an uncrowded trade, which means the sheep are not there yet for the Wall Street wolves to pounce on. of course with experience, something uncomfortable before can become comfortable, as you get better sense of where the opportunities are. good luck.
I like reasoning about the fundamental backdrop. Yes there's the trade war but we've yet to see what the final level of severity will be, and when a lot of news have been bad there's a better chance of relatively good surprises. Market going down without much fundamentally changing (that typically takes time, except in e.g. a 2008 style breakdown) is a buy. My assumption is retail sentiment trails past price movement; the downward spike in Feburary being in fresh memory. China attempting to sort out their debt mess is an interesting part of the picture, as well.