With all that's going on at at the moment - wars, economic uncertainty, climate change-related extreme weather events, persistent inflation worries, weakened consumer confidence, and a global trade war, just to to name a few - it's hard to believe that the world's stock exchanges are just shrugging it all off.
But, more than that, the major stock exchanges are in all-time record territory. Do they know something we don't? Well, they should: stock brokers and institutional investors are supposed to be the experts; they are highly paid professional, and spend almost all their waking hours researching and looking at past trends and future predictions. But I have to wonder.
In the USA, the S&P500, the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq indexes were all showing record highs, as was Canada's TSE. European stock exchanges are being more circumspect, but they too were trading at record levels just recently. Asian markets too are showing broadly positive vibes, if not actual record highs.
But it's still hard to believe that they see a rosier future that most of the rest of us can envisage right now. While those who are in the know admit that economic modelling is "very difficult" right now because "things are changing constantly", that doesn't seem to be holding investors back any. Some experts, however, are warning that markets may be taking a "naive view of what's happening on the trade front".
For example, there seems to be a rather gung-ho reliance on TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) on the part of many investors. Yes, Trump has indeed "chickened out" many times over the last few months of tariff negotiations, if that's how you want to interpret it. But to bank on that trend continuing seems, well, unjustifiably optimistic and idealistic to me. Can the glass really be half-full? Or are they in denial?
One indication that all is not quite as hunkydory as the stock exchanges suggest is the increasing value of, and investment activity in, gold. If things are so great, then why are so many people putting big money into gold bullion, which is usually seen as a solid fall-back position when stocks seem risky? Also, US government bond yields have been heading higher for some time now, for much the same reason.
Some influential market commentators certainly believe that investors are in denial about where all this tariff talk is going to end up, and I'm inclined to agree with them.