The stock market surged to all-time highs last week.

This isn’t sitting well with many people.

From HSBC’s Max Kettner (via Lisa Abramowicz): “‘This doesn’t make sense’ and ‘Risk assets are detached from reality.’ This is how a lot of our meetings start right now.”

And it’s not just the Wall Street pros and their clients having this conversation. The big newspapers I opened this past weekend all featured columns addressing skepticism about the stock market’s recent moves. Some excerpts:

“Markets are not properly pricing risk, because they really don’t have to. They have assumed that the U.S. government will not allow them to implode, and that assumption is putting the world economy at stake. What’s more, the new rescuer investors are counting on — artificial intelligence — is vulnerable to the exact risks markets are ignoring.“ – New York Times contributor Kyla Scanlon

“Current prices for both the AI stocks and oil are based on the market’s best guess for the two themes of the moment: Data-center building and the Iran war. This has made the market look cheaper than before. But it wouldn’t take much—the AI boom’s turning to bust or a peace deal in the Gulf—to make today’s cheapness look expensive in retrospect.“ – Wall Street Journal markets columnist James Mackintosh

“Still, the upshot of all the noise, AI enthusiasm and Taco is that overall the market appears to be looking through Trump’s term. For now, the Earnings Before Iran, Tariffs and Dubious Announcements approach prevails.“ – Financial Times opinion writer Tej Parikh

These highlights are just scratching the surface. Every major financial media outlet has writers wrestling with the rally. And if you thumb through X or Substack, you’ll easily find folks pushing more cynical and even conspiratorial narratives.

There are also plenty of folks arguing for the other side.

I lean toward the more optimistic side of the argument. Mostly because I believe that over time, stocks are driven by earnings. And the outlook for earnings has been improving in recent weeks, all things considered.

Maybe the outlook for earnings eventually deteriorates, validating the more tactically bearish market prognosticators. We’ll see. But that’s not what’s happening right now.