Quoth the Raven
· QTR’s Fringe Finance
· June 15, 2026 at 13:02
· ⏱ 12 min read
| Read on Substack ↗
Summary
The author argues that financial markets have stopped pricing risk due to decades of central bank and government intervention, making every event (war, peace, inflation, disinflation) bullish. The only event that could break this dynamic is total human extinction, as intervention would become impossible. This implies that traditional valuation metrics (CAPE, P/E) are ignored and that rallies are driven by liquidity, not fundamentals.
•The Iran war was announced on Feb 28, 2026, with the S&P 500 at ~6,900; after a brief dip, it climbed to ~7,430 before any framework agreement, and then rose again on the peace deal.
•The S&P 500 is trading at ~27x trailing earnings and the Shiller CAPE ratio near 40x, roughly 125% above its historical average of 16.2x.
•The author states that both the outbreak of war and its conclusion were treated as bullish by markets, demonstrating that no negative news can produce a sustained decline.
•Investors have learned that policymakers will always intervene to prevent prolonged asset deflation, so risk is evaluated by the probability of intervention, not by the event's damage.
•The author lists a series of contradictions: inflation is bullish, disinflation is bullish, strong growth is bullish, weak growth is bullish, war is bullish, peace is bullish—all leading to the same conclusion that stocks go higher regardless.
•The article suggests that the only bear case left is an 'I Am Legend' scenario where human extinction makes intervention impossible, and even then a lone server might keep executing 'buy the dip'.