The gap between people's perceptions of reality (as judged by consumer and business surveys of confidence) and reality (as judged by fundamental economic data) has never been higher than it is today.
Peak 'Animal Spirits'
The problem for those waiting for 'hard' data to catch up to 'soft' data is - it never has.
And in this case - the 'soft' survey data has moved 2 standard deviations above the norm...
Via Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,
With the US stock market likely to continue its levitation today, it means that by close of trading, the S&P500 will be above 2,400, the same as Goldman's year end price target, and 100 points away from Bank of America's "euphoric blow off top" destination, which is also known as Michael Hartnett's Icarus Trade. In a note released overnight, Hartnett confirms that he is "sticking with our “Icarus Trade” targets: SPX 2500, GT30 3.5%, DXY 110, oil $70/b", even as he admits that the euphoria level in stocks is unprecedented:
If yesterday's exuberant spike in stocks (surging Dow above 21,000), on a day when economic growth expectations were crushed, was not enough to scare you about the ebulient animal spirits in the markets, then perhaps this will. The largest S&P 500 ETF (SPY) was inflows of $8.2bn - the biggest daily inflow since Dec 2014 (and second largest in 6 years).
In the past, these massive floods of retail panic-buying flows have stalled the rallies (and not ended well).
The month of February was a mixed to positive among a broad sample of assets.