"Four in the morning
Crapped out, yawning
Longing my life away
I'll never worry
Why should I?
It's all gonna fade" – Paul Simon
That pretty much sums up the market recently as we wrap up an entire year of the Russell 2000 running along the same 2,200 line for what is now the 12th month. There is a certain point at which you stop saying it's consolidating for a move up and start saying we're clearly over-valued at this level.
?
"When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school
It's a wonder I can think at all
"If you took all the girls I knew when I was single
And brought 'em all together for one night
I know they'd never match my sweet imagination
Everything looks worse in black and white" – Paul Simon
We've been getting that kind of action from the other indexes since November and 2022 may indeed be the year we went nowhere, but that will certainly beat the alternative (a major correction) after climbing 120% on the Russell since early 2016. The S&P too was down at 2,000, so it's up 135%, Dow 16,000 to 36,100 is up 125% and the Nasdaq is up from 4,400 to 15,740 – that's a 257% run.
Interestingly the Nikkei is "only" up 100% and the Euro Stoxx Index is up just 43% and Germany's DAX is up just 60% so we have to ask ourselves – are US companies totally superior to other companies or are the US exchanges just ridiculously overvaluing their components? I'm sorry to say but the odds strongly favor the latter.
IN PROGRESS
