The real question is not "Is this a bubble" , which is not as useful as it seems in real life. The better question is: What is the market discounting? Which companies can retain their profit pool even after the boom cools down? Which companies' profits are only capital expenditure on others? Which stocks need a perfect future to not fall? Which companies are already too expensive even if the future is good? Where are the most likely places to be punctured by bad news for a quarter?
Call Options volume has already taken up as much as 70% of the options market, writing the highest record in the last four years. From the beginning of April to the present, that percentage has surged by 25 percentage points in just two months, breaking the record for the most dense two-month growth rate in history, and breaking through the short-lived high at the end of 2025. On the extended time axis, the average call Options over the last two years was just 55%. More horrifying than that, the overall value of Call Options in the S&P 500 as a percentage of its total market value has soared to a historically rare 4.1 times, doubling in two months. The herd instincts of group behavior and the desire for quick enrichment make retail investors and dynamic chase institutions crazily lever
US stock market "Kings" at risk of "Aces" anti-kill The Federal Reserve's signal is no longer implicit. Inflation remains too high, and the fantasy of interest rate cuts should not be over-grown; if prices go in the wrong direction again, raising interest rates would not be a taboo. This is not the routine "data dependence" of central bankers, but rather the cold water on the market. The annual increase rate of CPI remains high, the stickiness of core inflation has not dissipated, and prices have been above the 2% target for many years. Add to that the Middle East is recurrent, and once oil prices rise, it will seep into the economic capillaries along the way of transport, wages, manufacturing and service prices.