What’s not to like?

If you’re well-off, reside in an advanced economy and aren’t bothered by the wars, the weather and the distinct possibility that anyone under 20 will witness some of kind of apocalypse first-hand during their lifetime, it’s all sunshine and rainbows.

You can tell by the stocks. That infallible indicator of global prosperity.

As the simple figure shows, global equities were well on their way to a fifth consecutive monthly gain and a 10th in 11.

That’s thanks in no small part to US shares, of course. In his latest, BofA’s Michael Hartnett dryly remarked that nearly half of S&P 500 market cap is now under investigation by the Justice Department, the FTC or both. Something tells me that’s not going to derail things. Or not on its own, anyway.

Speaking of Hartnett, he was in rare form this week, where that means the pithiness was dialed up to the max. Among other things, he noted that 2024’s on track to be the “third biggest year of rates cuts this century.” As the figure on the left, below, shows, September saw 21 cuts on its own, the most for any month since the onset of the pandemic.

BofA expects 151 cuts by year-end. That’s surpassed only by 162 in 2020 and 205 in 2009. You remember 2009, right? That was the year after Main Street had to fork over several hundred billion dollars to bail out banks who’re still returning the favor all these years later by charging low-income families onerous overdraft fees and holding regular people hostage via threats to pull back on lending in order to secure regulatory relief ransom from the Fed. But I digress.

The figure on the right, above, shows global equity market cap on the brink of passing the record achieved during the 2021 “everything bubble.” Globally, stocks are worth around $125 trillion.

“Fed cutting in 50s [and] China stimulus >3% of GDP” suggests global policymakers are “desperate to prevent a rise in unemployment” which might “fuel a further rise in political populism,” Hartnett went on. “It’s the bubble dream: Fed slashing, oil crashing, China inflating.”