I doubt anyone came away from this week wiser.

By Friday afternoon in the US, the S&P was on track to close mostly flat for the week, a result that belied both a uniformly hawkish message from Fed officials and another blowout report from Nvidia. In other words: It wasn’t necessarily a “quiet” week. Things just netted out to “unchanged.”

Next week may not offer anything definitive either. The second estimate of Q1 US GDP’s due, as is an update on the Fed’s preferred price gauges, but those releases won’t alter the Committee’s “higher for longer” bias. A narrative shift, to the extent one’s in the offing, will have to wait for the first week of June.

For what it’s worth, US equity funds saw a fifth straight inflow over the latest weekly reporting period.

The $12.2 billion influx to US-dedicated ETFs and mutual funds brought the five-week haul to $37.7 billion and the YTD inflow to $99 billion.

Individual investor sentiment’s improving. The bullish share in AAII’s weekly survey was 47% this week, the highest since April 3. But that was all courtesy of converts from the “neutral” crowd. The bear share actually increased by 3ppt. 46% said US corporate earnings were better than they expected.

Globally, stock funds took in $10.5 billion last week. The inflow to US funds was offset by a record exodus from Japanese equities (nearly $6 billion) and a $1.1 billion outflow from European stock funds. EM funds took in $1.5 billion.

All in all, global equity funds have seen around $178 billion of net inflows so far this year. The split’s $352.5 to ETFs and $174 from mutual funds.

If you’re looking for excuses to sell and you’re not satisfied with “higher for longer,” you might come up short, no pun intended. Nvidia’s results (and forecast) plainly suggested AI “hyperscalers” are still spending lavishly on the new technology. Jensen Huang’s “new industrial revolution” story will likely carry the day until there’s a reason to fade it.

As for the Fed, it seems more and more like equities (and risk assets in general) just don’t care. Or have at least accepted that rates will be a semblance of elevated in perpetuity. It’s pretty obvious that current policy settings aren’t really restrictive. Indeed, many “serious” observers are coming around to the idea that high rates are actually contributing to the growth impulse in the US, as interest income drives spending both at the household level and in the corporate sector. So, why should stocks fret?

Some bears have capitulated or, if that’s too strong, we can say they’ve conceded the long odds on the kind of drawdown that’d vindicate aggressively bearish year-end SPX targets. Mike Wilson raised his 12-month forecast this week, for example. Marko Kolanovic’s not budging, though.

In the latest installment of his popular weekly “Flow Show” series, erstwhile bear-turned skeptical fence-sitter Michael Hartnett noted that although the bank’s pseudo-famous “Bull & Bear Indicator” is “static” at an inconclusive 5.6, their “Global Breadth Rule” is “moving toward a contrarian ‘sell’ signal,” which is triggered when more than 88% of global stock indices trade above both their 200-day and 50-day moving averages. That indicator sat at 71% as of mid-week.