finally unless there’s a late day rally, their ‘celebrations’ really give the impression they are operating in a bubble and very susceptible to manipulation, maybe the duties on birthday gifts from other countries got their attention

The fact that a number of market indices were at record highs yesterday suggests that many market participants aren't too nervous about anything. See Krugman's recent Wile E Coyote article. But also, the market isn't the economy--you can have good profits and people in distress simultaneously.

except people have been lead to believe a strong market equates to a strong economy, recently saw Paul Krugman on with Rachel Maddow & Lawrence O’Donnell and he sees little to celebrate and warned of tough times ahead made worse if trump takes over the fed-which hardly bothered Wall St

People believe a lot of weird stuff. But there's literally a maxim, around forever, that "the stock market is not the economy". People who believe otherwise are likely to be confused by events. Trump's antics are a separate issue which the market, in my view, has been evaluating incorrectly.

Right - the stock market is still the best place to beat inflation unfortunately

most Americans don’t have a cent directly invested in the market & those that do are involved via a 401(k) they just divvy up their ‘nest egg’ by what looks good, but they do take a glance at the markets & figure is they’re all doing fine the economy must be fine, it’s just the stores being greedy

Yes I know I was just commenting on why asset prices are still high - but it’s misleading because we’ve lost purchasing power both on kitchen table and macroeconomic levels (FX rates)

just think how unbelievably wealthy Thomas Edison would have been if companies were as highly valued as they are today

As a “tech” company CEO he’d get the speculative premium. Equity prices are untethered from fundamentals - read yesterday that 10 companies in the tech sector is nearly 40% of the S&P 500. This is oligarchy - predicting AI enabled feudalism soon and/or big tech will simply own everything else

(*That’s what the markets seem to be predicting with endless growth.)

"Soon"? More like "two months ago".

They weren’t concerned before the market crashed in 2008 either ( or the dot. com bust in 2000)