[daxorid]

A few reasons:

1. We are currently inside the second longest bull market in US history. Markets are cyclical. We are far more likely to be toward the end of the bull market than the beginning.

2. Interest rates have begun to normalize, albeit very slowly.

3. Source rock fracturing and enhanced oil recovery has bought us another 20 years of bumpy plateau. We are squandering this by employing civilization's best minds building Tinder, Uber, Snapchat, etc. The last "great inventions" were the microprocessor and the lithium polymer battery. Every disruption in the last forty years has been variations of ever more hedonistic consumerist enablement, while the clock continues to tick on future energy supply.

[jazzyk]

The reason investors are not interested in funding enterprise software (which usually increases productivity, and eventually standards of living) is that big companies have not been interested in optimizing their operations for many years now, because:

- business is good due to lowered competition (market consolidation)

- cheap/free debt can be used for various forms of financial engineering (stock buybacks, etc), making EPS look good

[mempko]

recessions and depressions usually happen after federal gov decides to reduce deficit spending. I'm curious if there is any indication of this happening. Possibly after elections...

EDIT: Judging from this site it seems they plan to reduce deficit spending to about 500bln a year. So yes, I expect a recession if that turns out true. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_deficit_chart.ht...

You can see here that every time there was a slowdown in deficit spending or a surplus there was a recession or depression. Notice that before the great depression, there was a long period of surplus and following surplus during Clinton years there was huge issues.

Let's hope Hillary does not repeat Bill's mistake.

http://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/spending_chart_1900_2021USp_1...