During the week of 8 February, investors plowed a record $58 billion into stock funds around the world, including $36.3 billion in U.S. funds and $13.1 billion into a global bond fund, the Financial Times reported.
Investors drained $10.6 billion from their cash accounts in making the purchases, the Times said.
Tech-focused funds rode the crest of the money wave, gathering $5.4 billion during the week ending 10 February.
About 63 percent of assets under management by Bank of America's private bank has been allocated to stocks, a record proportion, the bank reported.
Investors are giddy about the prospects that worldwide vaccine distribution will spark a global economic recovery, led by President Biden’s $1.9-trillion spending program that could hoist the world’s largest economy back to economic growth.
“Expectations for the upcoming U.S. stimulus are high,” James Reid, a Deutsche Bank strategist told the Times.
Those expectations were reinforced last week when U.S. treasury secretary Janet Yellin told a G7 meeting of finance ministers and central bank officers that “the time to go big is now.”
Another $1.9 trillion in cheap money piled on December’s $900 billion stimulus is stirring concerns about inflation among some observers.
However, a greater concern among many is equities’ detachment from economic fundamentals.
TRENDPOST: As with the U.S. markets, it’s a global gambler’s game. With price-earnings ratios at the 2000 tech-bubble highs, what keeps juicing the markets are the forecasts for non-stop cheap flows of money by central banks and governments to artificially prop up markets, negative interest rates, and unending quantitative easing, i.e., buying up corporate bonds, junk or otherwise.
If all it takes is printing up dollars and handing them out to solve our financial woes, why don’t they just give every person living in America a million bucks apiece and solve the problem instantly? That coupled with reparations and we will be partying all night in a new Golden Age of Prosperity. Come on Fed go for it!
Great idea Walter! It’s as simple as that.
It appears what I read is not good for the stock market, too much optimism. I ‘m shorting stocks.
Don’t short stocks in this market. You’ll get wiped out. Subscribe to Greg Mannarino and watch his blog twice a day.
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