Dear Mr. Market:

One of our favorite recurring themes here at Dear Mr. Market is what we like to call the “Broken Clock Club” — the group of perma-bears, doomcasters, and media pundits who reliably forecast financial catastrophe year after year. Like a broken clock, they’re eventually right… but for all the wrong reasons and far too late to be of any use to investors.

Let’s rewind to December 2023. Headlines were ablaze with bold predictions of economic calamity. Chief among them was the infamous economist Harry Dent, who warned of a 1929-style market crash hitting in early 2024. (click here to review that article that grabbed a lot of nervous eyeballs back then). Dent’s call wasn’t exactly an outlier; it echoed a chorus of dire predictions centered on Fed policy, inflation hangovers, geopolitical instability, commercial real estate defaults, and consumer weakness.

Yet here we are, approaching mid-2025, with the S&P 500 not only above its December 2023 levels, but clawing its way back and approaching highs throughout the first half of this year. What gives?