Cognitive dissonance

So I come back from a few days' sabbatical to find the markets have utterly taken leave of their senses.  Never mind the barrage of bad news Ian noted yesterday, the news at today's close is all about the Dow in striking distance of an all-time high — thanks to "easing inflation concerns" according to one account .  Maybe traders would be a bit less euphoric if they realized that if you plugged that January 2000 all-time high into a handy inflation calculator , the Dow would have to reach 13683.62 to equal that high.  And that's based on the phony-baloney CPI numbers, so God knows what the real inflation-adjusted all-time high would be.  But none of that matters when the market's in a mindset to — quite literally — party like it's 1999.

The Daily Reckoning