This is what I am guessing. There was a time (#oldendays) when people had to have a certain something to invest in stock markets. Even just ONE generation back (I am #50’something) that the only way to get stocks was in a retirement package. All of this kinda leveled the playing field to specific individual tendencies.
I started investing in the early 90’s. An internet bust at that time, while painful, made sense if you compared it to the tulip bubble. There was the idea that people of means invested, then something would “occasionally” get wonky and the market would correct.
This is when I learned the term ‘capitulation’. It was new at the time to all the fresh investors. We all learned that we just had to be patient until ‘capitulation’ happened. THEN!!! everything would be right priced and there was no way to lose after that…(well until the next ‘correction’).
About 15 years or so back, I noticed that there was a whole new direction in the market. Many more people could access brokerages, and many many more people could try to be day traders. At that time, I started to wonder if ‘capitulation’ was a new buzz word that all the “young” traders were looking for? At that time, did the fact that SOOOOOO MANNNNYYYYY new investors could invest, investors were now too diversified for capitulation to ever happen??
Look at market charts from about 2010 to know and you will see that every biggish dip has been followed by some kind of accumulation stage. There are so many new (kinds of) investors that the rules of the last 50some years are thrown out. Too many redit threads that are trying to predict “THE TURN AROUND!!!” that every young investor jumps on.
I agree that it has seemed too bullish in about 20 years now. There hasn’t been that big melt down that drives all the speculators out of the market. There are so many new investors every year that fall for the “it’s different this time” line…that the markets are very frothy.
No idea where this goes from here, but that has been my operating theory for a decade or two now. Just look at crypto for VERY similar chart patterns based on public sentiment and not actual business reasons.