When the stock market is going up it is functionally indistinguishable from a Ponzi scheme. The only limiting factor is new participants or an endless supply of money for the existing participants who can, as long as the money stays endless, trade back and forth with each other pushing prices ever higher. Since the Fed seems to be committed to endless money, and since we all know by now that this money very quickly ends up in the equity markets, what’s going to stop the money train? perhaps at some point the inflated values in the equity market will get so extreme that people feel the urge to cash out and buy something more tangible, but it doesn’t seem likely. Someday something will scare people enough and the resulting downturn will scare even more people, but until that happens… On a more tangible note, my son’s friends seem to have split their stimulus or massive unemployment checks between AR-15s and Robin Hood accounts. How could this possibly end badly?