US stockmarket bubble just keeps getting bigger

Despite the shine coming off tech stocks this week, valuations have been boosted by loose money and government spending. 

Jerome Powell and Janet Yellen
The dovish Jerome Powell and Janet Yellen are fanning the flames in the stockmarket
(Image credit: © Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Could US stocks be heading for their very own “1980s-style Japanese melt-up”? asks Ian Harnett in the Financial Times. The dovish duo of Janet Yellen at the Treasury and Jerome Powell at the US Federal Reserve are boosting valuations by drenching markets with loose money and state spending.

The market’s current valuation philosophy is “basically to ignore it”, says Eric Savitz in Barron’s. The likes of Zoom Video Communications and Shopify trade on more than 35 times estimated sales – sales, not profits. Yet an end to the pandemic, which will let us spend more time away from the internet, is starting to take the shine off tech stocks.

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Markets editor

Alex is an investment writer who has been contributing to MoneyWeek since 2015. He has been the magazine’s markets editor since 2019. 

Alex has a passion for demystifying the often arcane world of finance for a general readership. While financial media tends to focus compulsively on the latest trend, the best opportunities can lie forgotten elsewhere. 

He is especially interested in European equities – where his fluent French helps him to cover the continent’s largest bourse – and emerging markets, where his experience living in Beijing, and conversational Chinese, prove useful. 

Hailing from Leeds, he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. He also holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Manchester.