Chasing the top

No panic under fire, and the champagne is chilling to toast the peace deal. On paper, the weeks come and go, all looking the same. And yet the trap is closing slowly but surely on investors hunting for fresh yearly highs.

Since the start of the month, every fanfare bullish start has burned out fast, the sort of flash in the pan you’d expect from a bull market running on fumes. Take the attempted recovery on inflation numbers that came in “less bad” than expected: +3.5% year on year against the +3.8% forecast.

The bearish moves are quieter, playing out in total denial and buried under euphemisms. The slide in AI stocks gets politely labelled a “correction”, while SpaceX, the poster child of space conquest and runaway speculation, just saw its price cut in half in a matter of weeks, and nobody batted an eye.