Stock Market Investors Are Too Optimistic

There has been a V-shaped recovery; in the stock market, not in the economy. That is dividing opinion between the doomsayers who think this divergence makes no sense, and those who believe that the Federal Reserve and its central bank peers have this covered — and that they’ll restore the economy to its former state. That doyen of bargain hunters, Warren Buffett, has been conspicuous by his absence from the recent spate of share buying. Notably, he’s been a net seller of airline stocks.

The S&P 500 lost one-third of its value between its record high on Feb. 19 and March 23. It has clawed back half of that as the Fed chucked out its rule book and went on a shopping spree for assets. Equities are pretty much the only type of security that it won’t be adding to its ballooning balance sheet, although a fresh bout of market mayhem might change that too. America’s central bank is already snapping up exchange-traded funds and junk bonds, after all.