Former econometrician here:
Yes. Correct.
Ever since stock buybacks became the bog standard default, and P/E ratios are between 'significantly elevated' and 'completely fucking delusional'...
Yep. None this shit makes any real sense.
Which is actually a huge problem.
Because... the economic 'point' of a stock market, in capitalism, is more or less to act as a kind of giant, collective brain, that figures out how to efficiently and rationally allocate capital and investments.
The 'invisible hand', and all that.
So when that brain spends a decade or two more or less in a euphoric psychotic break... ("irrational exuberance")... well... it doesn't exactly make sound financial choices.
Which translates into about two decades of nonsensical investment of a society's resources.
Free market fundamentalism kind of requires that you assume capital markets are rational and efficient, always.
... But ... they aren't.
Less 'theoretically': Its a giant gambling machine, and if you're not rigging the game yourself, 99.9999% chance you're the mark, you're gonna lose.
And you won't see it coming, not untill its too late for you to get out intact.
Economists have for a long time referred to state run lotteries as effectively an 'idiot tax', because anyone who can do fairly basic statistics also knows they're very likely to lose money, thus, only idiots gamble.
The stock market as it is now more or less represents a more complex version of the same kind of thing... you've got the day traders, and they almost always get their clocks cleaned, they just develop a neurotic-obsessive personality based on 'no, I'm the one guy that can outsmart the market'.
No, you can't.


Oh I know.
That's why I just tell them things, and then laugh when they have their reddit style, cliqueish, spasm of hiveminded insulting mockery through their own insular set of memes and phrases that only make sense if you're permaonline in exactly the same way they are.
Then I just block those people.
Not everyone on ML or Hex is completely bonkers.
... But a lot of their mods and admins are.
But but, same with .world!
The internet is a funny place.