Fred Hickey on the stock market: "This is about as toxic a brew as I could ever imagine"

The combination of investor complacency in an environment with trade wars, out-of-control U.S. government spending, enormous deficits and debts, funding risks in a period of financial tightening, rising inflation, supply shortages, a likely economic recession, loss of faith in "U.S. exceptionalism," a declining U.S. dollar, risk of monetary debasement and a "massively overvalued stock market" (per investor extraordinaire Paul Singer) is about as toxic a brew as I could ever imagine.

Not only are investors extraordinarily complacent, the bear market rally since April 7 has encouraged them to return to taking enormous risks.  They're piling into the MAG 7 stocks, which have accounted for over half of the S&P 500's total market cap gains since the early April bottom.  Worse yet, they're pouring into all sorts of garbage stocks, grossly overpriced high-fliers and cryptos, including MicroStrategy (MSTR), CoreWeave (CRWV), Tesla (196 times falling earnings and with slumping auto deliveries), Palantir (PLTR - 600 P/E) and many more.  Investors have added a record $437 billion into U.S. ETFs this year, with the largest inflows occurring following market declines.  Believing that they cannot lose in the long run, they buy every dip (thanks Fed!).

~ Fred Hickey, "Toxic Combination," The High-Tech Strategist, p. 2, June 2, 2025

Tom Lee: 9 month rally "is the start of a new bull market"

In our view, the stock market bottomed October 12, 2022, and the rise over the past nine months is the start of a new bull market.  We have had a huge decline in inflation, and the inflation war is the war the Fed is waging and seemingly winning.

[...]

If inflation is cooling, and therefore people become more confident that two rate hikes are the most, or maybe there’s not even two hikes, then I think it’s going to ease financial conditions, so interest rates and bond-market volatility should be diminishing

~ Tom Lee, "He called the 2023 stock-market rally. Here’s what Wall Street’s biggest bull sees for the second half.," MarketWatch, July 6, 2023

President Biden brags about stock market hitting record highs (2022)

The stock market—the last guy's measure of everything—is about 20% higher than it was when my predecessor was there.  It has hit record after record after record on my watch, while making things more equitable for working class people.

~ President Joe Biden, January 7, 2022

(Video tweeted by ABC News on that day.)