The only thing I know about the future is that the deterioration in my social skills means it’s exceedingly likely to be a lonesome affair.

That’d be unfortunate except that my inveterate disdain for the species makes aloof detachment preferable to company. Any company.

Other than the inevitability of solitude (and remember, friends, we all die alone, even if there are a lot people around), the future’s a mystery. So, if the question is where the S&P will be in a year, the answer is that I don’t know. And contrary to the promise implicit in their job titles, neither do any Wall Street equity “strategists.”

The same’s true of the Fed funds rate. It’s headed lower from where it is now. That’s almost a certainty. But how fast is a mystery, and so’s where the price of money will ultimately end up. The people who set that price say 3.4% by the end of 2025. So we know where Fed funds almost surely won’t be 15 months from now. (See what I did there?)

If you consult the collective wisdom of company analysts, corporate America will growth profits by 18% over that period, which is to say from now until December 31 of 2025.

As the figure shows, the forecasted trajectory on that front is pretty damn steep.

“What could go wrong?” to employ the clichéd punchline that continues to pay the bills, figuratively and literally, for legions of unimaginative macro-market commentators who’re somehow so bereft in the creative writing department that “What could go wrong?” is (still, after all these years) the best they can come up with in the gallows humor department.

Let’s assume nothing goes wrong. Let’s assume contradictory expectations for robust profit growth and big Fed cuts don’t prove contradictory after all, and that analysts and policymakers are correct to project double-digit EPS growth and 200bps (or more) of cumulative easing by end-2025, respectively. What would that mean for equity prices?

Bubble, probably. “Credit and stock markets [are] pricing in 250bps of rate cuts and 18% SPX EPS growth between now and end-2025,” BofA’s Michael Hartnett marveled, in his latest. “[It] don’t get much better than that for risk, so investors are forced to chase,” he added, on the way to suggesting that “bubble risks [are] returning.”

A few hours after Jerome Powell delivered a 50bps rate cut, setting the stage for a big Nasdaq gain the following session, Stifel’s Barry Bannister said we’re witnessing “Groundhog Day versus the 1990s Tech Bubble.” “Just as countries that go rogue become almost uninvestable, investors caught in the grips of a speculative fever become almost unanalyzable,” he wrote.

Enjoy your Saturday.