Is the market getting a little too comfy with the 'soft landing' narrative?
Watching the general sentiment around US equities lately, it feels like we've collectively decided the soft landing is a done deal. We had a brief wobble, but now it's back to business as usual, with the big indices pushing higher. I get it, the data points have been, dare I say, cooperative. Inflation seems to be trending in the right direction, and the jobs numbers, while showing some cooling, haven't fallen off a cliff.
But is anyone else getting a nagging feeling that we're perhaps a bit too optimistic, too quickly? I'm not seeing the kind of genuine concern I'd expect after the kind of rate hikes we've had. The narrative is so pervasive now that any hiccup is immediately discounted as a buying opportunity. Take a look at $ABC, it's holding 179.98 strong, almost daring you to bet against it, despite the macro backdrop still being, well, tricky. Am I missing something fundamental here, or are we just setting ourselves up for a rude awakening? Push back, tell me where I'm wrong.
It's always fun when the market decides to collectively hold hands and skip through a field of tulips, isn't it? Just when you think it's about to trip, it pulls out a unicycle. I'm just wondering if those tulips are actually just very convincing weeds.