Rattled Stock Bulls Keep Paying Punishing Price for Hopefulness

Another S&P 500 bounce is being squashed as quickly as it surfaced. The optimistic spirits that keep driving bulls back to equities, however, are hanging around.

While punishment for optimism has been swift in 2022, a decade of bull-market conditioning is proving nearly impossible to vanquish. Retail investors mostly refuse to part with meme shares, bullish handicappers sit with predictions that many stocks will double, and valuations are high enough to imply an opinion that next year’s hit to earnings will be trivial.