Is There Any Truth In Our Markets?

Is there any truth in our markets? Seriously. We know that the stock market is massively overvalued, right? Yet buying continues unabated. Of course, that's not unusual. Markets move from under to overvalued throughout history. They say greed and fear drive these cycles. Fair enough. Most folks invest emotionally - both in the buying and selling. So it makes sense to see the great stock market cycles as being driven by emotions: greed and fear.

So does that mean there's no truth in our markets in general? No, unless you think that a market owes you fair value for your money and anything that diverges from that fair value is somehow misleading - in effect a lie. 

But that's not how it works, is it?

Indeed, the stock market is a thing, not a person with a conscience based on an ability to distinguish truth from falsehood. We use to say that the stock markets action was the result of the individual decisions of millions of investors. And so it was seen as something that "looked forward," that could tell us what was coming up in the economy, even the world. So in a certain sense, the stock market was a source of truth in its ability to predict what was coming. 

But that was before HFT (High Frequency Trading) outfits dominated daily trading. (some say they account for up to 80% of the daily volume of trades! Does that mean the stock market's prediction function is null and void. What do you think?

Whatever the answer, our current market would, under the old view of looking forward would seem to be telling us that everything's hunky-dory; the economy is strong and getting stronger. Our financial future is bright. Right?

But here's another way to look at whether there's any truth in our markets. It's to look at whether there's any truth in our society. If there is, that would mean that we folks who make up our society can distinguish between truth and falsehood. We believe that some things are true, some not. It also means that we can distinguish between good and bad - or to put it more accurately, between good and evil.

There's lots of sturm und drang out there when it comes to good and evil these days, isn't there. Just think of our social and political divide. We've got basically two sides. One thinks they're good and the other is evil - and vice versa. So that implies that there's some objective standard upon which these judgements are made, right.

But wait. Is that even possible these days? An recent article would say maybe not - or perhaps no. 

The article attempts to describe "Postmodernism." If you haven't run into it in your reading and/or study (if that's part of your regular intellectual activity), this could help bring you up to speed.

From the article:  

Per Britannica:

Postmodernism is largely a reaction against the intellectual assumptions and values of the modern period in the history of Western philosophy (roughly, the 17th through the 19th century). Indeed, many of the doctrines characteristically associated with postmodernism can fairly be described as the straightforward denial of general philosophical viewpoints that were taken for granted during the 18th-century Enlightenment, though they were not unique to that period.

Within this warped ideology of a fat and sassy political movement that has enough money to dabble in such folly, moral relativism, and the use of language through deconstruction and narrative engineering are critical (pun intended) to accomplishing their aims of recreating society in their preferred civilizational construct.

Postmodernists deny that there are aspects of reality that are objective; that there are statements about reality that are objectively true or false; that it is possible to have knowledge of such statements (objective knowledge); that it is possible for human beings to know some things with certainty; and that there are objective, or absolute, moral values. Reality, knowledge, and value are constructed by discourses; hence, they can vary with them. This means that the discourse of modern science, when considered apart from the evidential standards internal to it, has no greater purchase on the truth than do alternative perspectives, including (for example) astrology and witchcraft. Postmodernists sometimes characterize the evidential standards of science, including the use of reason and logic, as “Enlightenment rationality.”

Source: https://amgreatness.com/2025/09/13/are-you-entitled-to-your-own-facts/ 

So there it is - some food for thought. After all, with this dysfunctional stock market, it's probably better to gain some understanding of this. It effects us all, and it's a better use of our time than talking about the gyrations of a market that really presents anything but truth.