With year-end target after year-end target having been met and raised by the oh-so-ethical sell-side strategists and asset-gatherers, it appears the Fed’s grand plan of dragging every bit of cash into the increasingly more risky equity markets is working. After a rally driven more by financial engineering that real sustainable growth, Bloomberg reports, individual investors are plowing money back into the U.S. stock market just as professional strategists say gains for this year are over. As one senior equity manager warned, “if Wall Street, after poring over all known data, comes up with a target and we’re already there, and you still see individual investors buying and they’re typically the ones that are late to the party, it would seem there is limited upside,” but that didn’t stop about $100 billion being added to equity mutual funds and exchange-traded funds in the past year, 10 times more than the previous 12 months. We have found this cycle’s greater fool and once again it is the retail investor.
Individual investors are plowing money back into the U.S. stock market just as professional strategists say gains for this year are over. About $100 billion has been added to equity mutual funds and exchange-traded funds in the past year, 10 times more than the previous 12 months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and the Investment Company Institute.
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