🕷️ Crawler Inspector

URL Lookup

Direct Parameter Lookup

Raw Queries and Responses

1. Shard Calculation

Query:

Response:

Calculated Shard: 84 (from laksa089)

2. Crawled Status Check

Query:

curl -X POST \
  'http://laksa084.int.ahrefs:8124/' \
  -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
  -H 'X-ClickHouse-Database: crawler3' \
  -H 'Authorization: Basic YXBpOg==' \
  -d 'SELECT getAhrefsURLFromUnparsed(src_unparsed) AS found_url, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(download_stamp), 0) AS crawl_time, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(props_url_first_seen), 0) AS first_indexed_time, download_http_code AS http_code, src_unparsed AS src_unparsed, src_root_hash AS src_root_hash, history_drop_reason AS history_drop_reason, meta_title AS meta_title, meta_descriptions AS meta_descriptions, attrs_boilerpipe_text AS attrs_boilerpipe_text, attrs_markdown AS attrs_markdown, attrs_readable_markdown AS attrs_readable_markdown, meta_canonical AS meta_canonical FROM crawler3.page_info_local FINAL PREWHERE (src_root_hash, src_unparsed) IN ((getAhrefsRootHashFromUnparsed(getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/business/stock-market-melt-up-downturn.html\')), getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/business/stock-market-melt-up-downturn.html\'))) FORMAT JSONEachRow'

Response:

{"found_url":"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/07\/11\/business\/stock-market-melt-up-downturn.html","crawl_time":1770200465,"first_indexed_time":1752240827,"http_code":200,"src_unparsed":"com,nytimes!www,\/2025\/07\/11\/business\/stock-market-melt-up-downturn.html s443","src_root_hash":"4566504020376537684","history_drop_reason":null,"meta_title":"The Danger of a Stock Market Melt-Up - The New York Times","meta_descriptions":["Traders have repeatedly shrugged off President Trump’s disruptive tariff wars and fiscal policy, pushing U.S. stock prices back into expensive territory, our columnist says."],"attrs_boilerpipe_text":"Advertisement\nSKIP ADVERTISEMENT\nStrategies\nTraders have repeatedly shrugged off President Trump’s disruptive tariff wars and fiscal policy, pushing U.S. stock prices back into expensive territory, our columnist says.\nCredit...\nGiulio Bonasera\nPublished July 11, 2025\nUpdated July 12, 2025\nMarket meltdowns have been a big worry lately, and for good reason. With President Trump imposing the highest tariffs since the Great Depression and enacting myriad other disruptive policies, the threat of another market crash can’t be ignored.\nYet despite an 18.9 percent downturn in the S&P 500 earlier this year, the stock market has\nrebounded\n. It has continually shrugged off shocks that, in previous years, may have set off a prolonged bear market.\nIn fact, stocks have become expensive again. While the potential for a serious market downturn hasn’t vanished, I think it’s also time to begin thinking about another problem: the danger of a market melt-up.\nBy many measures, we’re already in perilously overvalued territory. On a historical basis, share prices are high in relation to corporate earnings, assets and the size of the overall economy.\nI don’t want to go too far with this. The U.S. stock market isn’t nearly as expensive as it was at the height of the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s and early 2000. But it is increasingly pricey — surprisingly so, when you consider the repeated blows to market sentiment dealt by the Trump administration.\nTariffs re-emerged as a major issue over the past week. The administration issued an array of announcements: Tariffs will increase, be delayed, not be delayed, be imposed on copper, be negotiated lower, be made permanent, and on and on. Who really knows? The stock market has been absorbing this information, stumbling from time to time but then regaining its footing. While the economic impact of the tariffs has barely been felt yet, the stock market remains much higher than it was at the beginning of the year.\nHow High?\nOne sign that the “market is a little out over its skis,” as Bespoke Investment Group put it in a note to clients this past week, is that shares of companies that are making no profit have been rising faster than those that are deeply profitable. Bespoke, an independent financial research firm, said, “For stocks that are losing money, generally speaking, the bigger the losses the better the returns.”\nCompanies with marvelous narratives about future returns are capturing investors’ imaginations. For example, a leading stock in the Russell 3000 index, with a gain of more than 500 percent this year, was Aeva Technologies. It makes sensors for robots, autonomous vehicles and drones — all hot items these days. Yet the company is losing a ton of money.\nNo matter. In the current market, the sky is the limit. Referring to the astonishing stock performance of money-losing companies, Bespoke said: “This is, to put it mildly, an unsustainable dynamic. Valuations can only do so much to support markets before the trend reverses. Of course, there are other sources of market return other than multiple expansion of no-earnings companies, but this dynamic is still emblematic of a market that is starting to get carried away with itself.”\nMoneymaking companies are receiving remarkably high valuations, too. Take Nvidia, which this past week became the first company to pierce the $4 trillion threshold for stock market capitalization. Nvidia is highly profitable, and it designs many of the advanced chips that power artificial intelligence Nothing seems to be more prized than A.I. in the market right now.\nNvidia stock is extremely expensive: Its price-to-earnings ratio is above 50:1, according to FactSet. That means that an investor must pay more than $50 for every $1 of the company’s earnings. Compared with the start of 2023, when its price was 250 times its earnings, the company may look like a bargain. Even so, its current valuation implies that its profits will grow at lightning speed for decades to come. The market may be comfortable with that assumption, but the law of gravity makes me\nquestion\nwhether Nvidia’s price is sustainable.\nBooms and Busts\nSteep market valuations alone don’t cause price declines, but in the past, they have eventually led to trouble.\nAlan Greenspan\n, the former Federal Reserve chairman, warned elliptically of excessively high stock prices in December 1996, when he famously asked, “How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions?”\nHe didn’t provide a clear answer. In response to Mr. Greenspan’s words, the market foundered but then shot up further. It wasn’t until March 2000 that stock prices — by then wildly exorbitant by most measures — ultimately crashed.\nIrrational exuberance has become standard Wall Street jargon. Robert Shiller, the Yale economist and Nobel laureate,\nused\nthe phrase as the title for an important book.\nMelt-up isn’t as widely used, but it may be on the verge of becoming so.\n“The melt-up in risk assets continues,” HSBC, the global bank based in London, warned recently.\nIt saw two distinct possibilities: an intensifying melt-up reflecting investor exuberance or a meltdown in the face of what could turn out to be endlessly troubling developments, many of them meted out by the Trump administration.\n“The bearish narrative can point to tariff rates,” the bank wrote. But, HSBC also said, Wall Street analysts have lowered expectations for corporate earnings to a level that most companies are likely to exceed. Therefore, it concluded, “We have the perfect recipe for the broad-based melt-up in risk assets to continue.”\nMelt-ups have long been part of the vocabulary of Edward Yardeni, the independent Wall Street economist and strategist. At the moment, he said, the market is “sort of, kind of, in a melt-up.”\nReferring to the sharp stock downturn earlier this year, he added, “Just look at the way this correction has been reversed, it’s been a melt-up.” Stock valuations are “pretty rich,” he said, and people in the markets are “back to believing” that artificial intelligence is “a miracle technology.”\nIn an email, he estimated a range of “subjective probabilities” for the stock market. There is a 60 percent chance that the bull market will continue, he said, a 25 percent chance of a bear market caused by a recession, and a third possibility: a 15 percent chance of a melt-up.\nIn a melt-up, stocks would spiral much higher, generating big gains on an unstable base.\nThe gains would be wonderful. But any provocation or disruption could set off a severe downturn.\nDon’t Get Too Excited\n“Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” That’s an adage often attributed to the British economist John Maynard Keynes, though I’ve never found proof that he said it. Nevertheless, it’s apt. I worry about market melt-ups but rarely feel confident enough about my observations to do anything about it in my investing life.\nOnly occasionally, in my view, is it completely obvious that the market is so high that it must fall, or so low that it must rise. (Such moments are usually accompanied by a major shift in policy by the Federal Reserve — lowering interest rates sharply at the bottom of a bear market, or raising them when the economy is so red hot that it is on the verge of burning.) This isn’t one of those times. In the second Trump administration, anything is possible for the stock market. It could rise, fall or, more likely, be extremely volatile and vacillate between extremes.\nAs a long-term investor using mainly diversified global index funds, I try to ride out the market’s madness, using bonds and cash (much of it in money-market funds) to buffer me from severe stock downturns. I’ve bulked up that buffer this year.\nWhile I take a long-term view, I would prefer a calmer ride. Who needs the agony of a stock market decline, even if you don’t intend to touch the money for decades? More important, many people — including those in retirement or planning to start it soon — can’t handle major downturns. And market crashes are often associated with recessions.\nMelt-ups are much more pleasant than downturns but they cause major problems, too, because they are often followed by crashes.\nIt would be far better if markets were calm and orderly. So I’m hoping we have neither a melt-up nor a meltdown now. A traditionally bumpy market, with setbacks but an upward arc, is in nearly everyone’s interest. So don’t get too excited if markets start to fly toward the sky.\nA version of this article appears in print on\nJuly 13, 2025\n, Section BU, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: The Increasing Danger of a Market Melt-Up\n.\nOrder Reprints\n|\nToday’s Paper\n|\nSubscribe\nRelated Content\nStrategies\nJeff Sommer’s column on markets, finance and the economy.\nDavide Bonazzi\nDan Page\nNorlys Perez\/Reuters\nMore in Business\nvia House Oversight Democrats\nRobert F. Bukaty\/Associated Press\nAudra Melton for The New York Times\nDoug Mills\/The New York Times\nEditors’ Picks\nCassidy Araiza for The New York Times\nBrian Rea\nTrending in The Times\nNeilson Barnard\/Getty Images\nIllustration by Sam Whitney\/The New York Times\nHayley Watson\nMatthew Williams\nIllustration by Sam Whitney\/The New York Times; Source image by KenWiedemann\/Getty Images\nMizuki Sakai\/Kyodo News, via Associated Press\nEmilio Madrid\nImage by Vincenzo Livieri\/Reuters\nSaher Alghorra for The New York Times\nGabriela Bhaskar\/The New York Times\nAdvertisement\nSKIP ADVERTISEMENT","attrs_markdown":"[Skip to content](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/07\/11\/business\/stock-market-melt-up-downturn.html#site-content)[Skip to site index](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/07\/11\/business\/stock-market-melt-up-downturn.html#site-index)\n\nSearch & Section Navigation\n\nSection Navigation\n\nSearch\n\n[Business](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/business)\n\n[Log in](https:\/\/myaccount.nytimes.com\/auth\/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Fsubscription%2Fonboarding-offer%3FcampaignId%3D7JFJX%26EXIT_URI%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2025%252F07%252F11%252Fbusiness%252Fstock-market-melt-up-downturn.html&asset=masthead)\n\nWednesday, February 4, 2026\n\n[Today’s Paper](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/todayspaper)\n\nTrump Administration\n\n- [Epstein Files](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/01\/us\/trump-epstein-files.html)\n- [A Year of Tariffs](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/02\/business\/trump-tariffs-one-year-later.html)\n- [Kennedy Center Renovations](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/02\/us\/politics\/kennedy-center-trump-construction.html)\n- [Policy Lawsuits](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2026\/us\/trump-administration-lawsuits.html)\n- [Tariff Tracker](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2025\/07\/28\/business\/economy\/trump-tariff-tracker.html)\n\nAdvertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/07\/11\/business\/stock-market-melt-up-downturn.html#after-top)\n\nSupported by\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/07\/11\/business\/stock-market-melt-up-downturn.html#after-sponsor)\n\nStrategies\n\n# The Danger of a Market Melt-Up\nTraders have repeatedly shrugged off President Trump’s disruptive tariff wars and fiscal policy, pushing U.S. stock prices back into expensive territory, our columnist says.\n\n- Share full article\n- 405\n\n![An illustration of black tags with dollar signs hanging on white strings, with the bottoms of the tags melting into a puddle.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/07\/13\/business\/13strategies-illo\/13strategies-illo-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nCredit...Giulio Bonasera\n\n[![Jeff Sommer](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2018\/02\/20\/multimedia\/author-jeff-sommer\/author-jeff-sommer-thumbLarge-v2.png)](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/jeff-sommer)\n\nBy [Jeff Sommer](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/jeff-sommer)\n\nJeff Sommer writes [Strategies](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/column\/business-strategies), a weekly column on markets, finance and the economy.\n\nPublished July 11, 2025Updated July 12, 2025\n\nMarket meltdowns have been a big worry lately, and for good reason. With President Trump imposing the highest tariffs since the Great Depression and enacting myriad other disruptive policies, the threat of another market crash can’t be ignored.\n\nYet despite an 18.9 percent downturn in the S\\&P 500 earlier this year, the stock market has [rebounded](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/07\/04\/business\/markets-investment-returns-trump.html). It has continually shrugged off shocks that, in previous years, may have set off a prolonged bear market.\n\nIn fact, stocks have become expensive again. While the potential for a serious market downturn hasn’t vanished, I think it’s also time to begin thinking about another problem: the danger of a market melt-up.\n\nBy many measures, we’re already in perilously overvalued territory. On a historical basis, share prices are high in relation to corporate earnings, assets and the size of the overall economy.\n\nI don’t want to go too far with this. The U.S. stock market isn’t nearly as expensive as it was at the height of the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s and early 2000. But it is increasingly pricey — surprisingly so, when you consider the repeated blows to market sentiment dealt by the Trump administration.\n\nTariffs re-emerged as a major issue over the past week. The administration issued an array of announcements: Tariffs will increase, be delayed, not be delayed, be imposed on copper, be negotiated lower, be made permanent, and on and on. Who really knows? The stock market has been absorbing this information, stumbling from time to time but then regaining its footing. While the economic impact of the tariffs has barely been felt yet, the stock market remains much higher than it was at the beginning of the year.\n\n## How High?\nOne sign that the “market is a little out over its skis,” as Bespoke Investment Group put it in a note to clients this past week, is that shares of companies that are making no profit have been rising faster than those that are deeply profitable. Bespoke, an independent financial research firm, said, “For stocks that are losing money, generally speaking, the bigger the losses the better the returns.”\n\nCompanies with marvelous narratives about future returns are capturing investors’ imaginations. For example, a leading stock in the Russell 3000 index, with a gain of more than 500 percent this year, was Aeva Technologies. It makes sensors for robots, autonomous vehicles and drones — all hot items these days. Yet the company is losing a ton of money.\n\nNo matter. In the current market, the sky is the limit. Referring to the astonishing stock performance of money-losing companies, Bespoke said: “This is, to put it mildly, an unsustainable dynamic. Valuations can only do so much to support markets before the trend reverses. Of course, there are other sources of market return other than multiple expansion of no-earnings companies, but this dynamic is still emblematic of a market that is starting to get carried away with itself.”\n\n## Editors’ Picks\n[![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/01\/multimedia\/00biz-corneroffice-nestle-zfch\/00biz-corneroffice-nestle-zfch-thumbLarge.jpg)Nestlé’s Chief Is in Turnaround Mode. He Drinks 8 Cups of Coffee a Day.](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/01\/business\/nestles-philipp-navratil.html)\n\n[![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/02\/multimedia\/02TBR-Klosterman-review-sub2-pwqf\/02TBR-Klosterman-review-sub2-pwqf-thumbLarge.jpg)Is Football Doomed? Chuck Klosterman Thinks So.](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/02\/books\/review\/chuck-klosterman-football.html)\n\n[![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/03\/multimedia\/03re-Walden1-wcvl\/03re-Walden1-wcvl-thumbLarge.jpg)They Went to the Woods Because They Wished to Live Deliberately](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/03\/realestate\/walden-cabin-thoreau-replica-building.html)\n\nAdvertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/07\/11\/business\/stock-market-melt-up-downturn.html#after-pp_edpick)\n\nMoneymaking companies are receiving remarkably high valuations, too. Take Nvidia, which this past week became the first company to pierce the \\$4 trillion threshold for stock market capitalization. Nvidia is highly profitable, and it designs many of the advanced chips that power artificial intelligence Nothing seems to be more prized than A.I. in the market right now.\n\nNvidia stock is extremely expensive: Its price-to-earnings ratio is above 50:1, according to FactSet. That means that an investor must pay more than \\$50 for every \\$1 of the company’s earnings. Compared with the start of 2023, when its price was 250 times its earnings, the company may look like a bargain. Even so, its current valuation implies that its profits will grow at lightning speed for decades to come. The market may be comfortable with that assumption, but the law of gravity makes me [question](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/02\/22\/business\/nvidia-price-to-sales-ratio.html) whether Nvidia’s price is sustainable.\n\n## Booms and Busts\nSteep market valuations alone don’t cause price declines, but in the past, they have eventually led to trouble. [Alan Greenspan](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1996\/12\/07\/business\/a-buried-message-loudly-heard.html), the former Federal Reserve chairman, warned elliptically of excessively high stock prices in December 1996, when he famously asked, “How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions?”\n\nHe didn’t provide a clear answer. In response to Mr. Greenspan’s words, the market foundered but then shot up further. It wasn’t until March 2000 that stock prices — by then wildly exorbitant by most measures — ultimately crashed.\n\nIrrational exuberance has become standard Wall Street jargon. Robert Shiller, the Yale economist and Nobel laureate, [used](https:\/\/press.princeton.edu\/books\/paperback\/9780691173122\/irrational-exuberance?srsltid=AfmBOoop4cdds5pTYCjZoeZwEBPTSblz78gRz9daZZG9upWXPw5FaRCK) the phrase as the title for an important book.\n\nMelt-up isn’t as widely used, but it may be on the verge of becoming so.\n\n“The melt-up in risk assets continues,” HSBC, the global bank based in London, warned recently.\n\nIt saw two distinct possibilities: an intensifying melt-up reflecting investor exuberance or a meltdown in the face of what could turn out to be endlessly troubling developments, many of them meted out by the Trump administration.\n\n“The bearish narrative can point to tariff rates,” the bank wrote. But, HSBC also said, Wall Street analysts have lowered expectations for corporate earnings to a level that most companies are likely to exceed. Therefore, it concluded, “We have the perfect recipe for the broad-based melt-up in risk assets to continue.”\n\nMelt-ups have long been part of the vocabulary of Edward Yardeni, the independent Wall Street economist and strategist. At the moment, he said, the market is “sort of, kind of, in a melt-up.”\n\nReferring to the sharp stock downturn earlier this year, he added, “Just look at the way this correction has been reversed, it’s been a melt-up.” Stock valuations are “pretty rich,” he said, and people in the markets are “back to believing” that artificial intelligence is “a miracle technology.”\n\nIn an email, he estimated a range of “subjective probabilities” for the stock market. There is a 60 percent chance that the bull market will continue, he said, a 25 percent chance of a bear market caused by a recession, and a third possibility: a 15 percent chance of a melt-up.\n\nIn a melt-up, stocks would spiral much higher, generating big gains on an unstable base.\n\nThe gains would be wonderful. But any provocation or disruption could set off a severe downturn.\n\n## Don’t Get Too Excited\n“Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” That’s an adage often attributed to the British economist John Maynard Keynes, though I’ve never found proof that he said it. Nevertheless, it’s apt. I worry about market melt-ups but rarely feel confident enough about my observations to do anything about it in my investing life.\n\nOnly occasionally, in my view, is it completely obvious that the market is so high that it must fall, or so low that it must rise. (Such moments are usually accompanied by a major shift in policy by the Federal Reserve — lowering interest rates sharply at the bottom of a bear market, or raising them when the economy is so red hot that it is on the verge of burning.) This isn’t one of those times. In the second Trump administration, anything is possible for the stock market. It could rise, fall or, more likely, be extremely volatile and vacillate between extremes.\n\nAs a long-term investor using mainly diversified global index funds, I try to ride out the market’s madness, using bonds and cash (much of it in money-market funds) to buffer me from severe stock downturns. I’ve bulked up that buffer this year.\n\nWhile I take a long-term view, I would prefer a calmer ride. Who needs the agony of a stock market decline, even if you don’t intend to touch the money for decades? More important, many people — including those in retirement or planning to start it soon — can’t handle major downturns. And market crashes are often associated with recessions.\n\nMelt-ups are much more pleasant than downturns but they cause major problems, too, because they are often followed by crashes.\n\nIt would be far better if markets were calm and orderly. So I’m hoping we have neither a melt-up nor a meltdown now. A traditionally bumpy market, with setbacks but an upward arc, is in nearly everyone’s interest. So don’t get too excited if markets start to fly toward the sky.\n\n**More Strategies Columns by Jeff Sommer**\n\n[![]()The Outlook for the Economy Has Improved. And Yet. Aug. 18, 2023](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/08\/18\/business\/the-outlook-for-the-economy-has-improved-and-yet.html)\n\n[Jeff Sommer](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/jeff-sommer) writes [Strategies](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/column\/business-strategies), a weekly column on markets, finance and the economy.\n\nA version of this article appears in print on July 13, 2025, Section BU, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: The Increasing Danger of a Market Melt-Up. [Order Reprints](https:\/\/nytimes.wrightsmedia.com\/) \\| [Today’s Paper](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/todayspaper) \\| [Subscribe](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/subscriptions\/Multiproduct\/lp8HYKU.html?campaignId=48JQY)\n\nSee more on: [Edward Yardeni](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/topic\/edward-yardeni), [U.S. Politics](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/politics), [Donald Trump](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/spotlight\/donald-trump)\n\nRead 405 comments\n\n- Share full article\n- 405\n\n***\n## The Latest on the Trump Administration\n***\n- **Call to ‘Nationalize’ Elections:** President Trump [called for the Republican Party to “nationalize” voting in the United States](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/02\/us\/politics\/trump-nationalize-elections.html), an aggressive rhetorical step that was likely to raise new worries about his administration’s efforts to involve itself in election matters.\n- **‘Project Vault’:** President Trump rolled out a \\$12 billion initiative [aimed at bolstering domestic stockpiles of strategic critical minerals](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/02\/business\/trump-critical-minerals-stockpile.html), as the United States looks to reduce its reliance on China for key components of technology that powers cars, computers and phones.\n- **Kennedy Center Shutdown:** [The Trump administration’s announcement](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/02\/us\/politics\/trump-kennedy-center-renovation.html) to shut the center for a major overhaul led to [a swirl of confusion and anxiety among performers and patrons](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/03\/arts\/music\/trumps-kennedy-center.html) about its future.\n- **Threats to Gun Owners:** Jeannine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, [threatened jail time for anyone who enters the capital with a gun](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/02\/us\/politics\/pirro-dc-guns.html), including lawful owners.\n- **An Unusual Call:** Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, [brokered a call between President Trump and the F.B.I. agents](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/02\/us\/politics\/trump-fbi-phone-call-georgia-gabbard.html) investigating the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, so the president could directly question them on the inquiry.\n***\n**How We Report on the Trump Administration**\n\nHundreds of readers asked about our coverage of the president. Times editors and reporters [responded to some of the most common questions](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/03\/06\/insider\/how-the-new-york-times-reports-on-trump.html).\n\n## Related Content\n### [Strategies](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/column\/business-strategies)\nJeff Sommer’s column on markets, finance and the economy.\n\n- [Your ‘Safe’ Stock Funds May Be Riskier Than You Think](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/30\/business\/stock-market-concentration-risk.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/01\/business\/30strategies-illo\/30strategies-illo-thumbLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Davide Bonazzi\n- [Low Rates Sound Great. But a Trump Fed Could Cause a Painful ‘Sugar High.’](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/23\/business\/trump-fed-interest-rates-inflation.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/25\/business\/25strategies-illo\/25strategies-illo-thumbLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Dan Page\n- [What’s Next for Cuba, Now That Its Main Oil Supplier Is Gone?](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/16\/business\/cuba-venezuela-mexico-oil-diplomacy.html)\n  \n  Norlys Perez\/Reuters\n\n### [More in Business](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/business)\n- [Epstein’s Trust Reveals Who Would Inherit His Fortune](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/03\/business\/jeffrey-epstein-trust-inherit-karyna-shuliak.html)\n  \n  ![It’s unclear how much any of the beneficiaries to Jeffrey Epstein’s estate will receive. Its value has dropped significantly since his death, owing to payment of taxes, legal fees and settlements to victims of his sexual abuse.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/03\/multimedia\/00biz-Epstein-estate-pvfm\/00biz-Epstein-estate-pvfm-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  via House Oversight Democrats\n- [Virginia Oliver, Maine’s ‘Lobster Lady’ and Folk Hero, Dies at 105](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/03\/business\/virginia-oliver-dead.html)\n  \n  ![Ms. Oliver in 2021, when she was 101. “She represented that no-nonsense Mainer who just got up every day and did what they had to do,” said Barbara Walsh, the author of a children’s book about Mrs. Oliver.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/03\/multimedia\/03Oliver--01-ljvh\/03Oliver--01-ljvh-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Robert F. Bukaty\/Associated Press\n- [The Questionable Science Behind the Odd-Looking Football Helmets](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/03\/business\/super-bowl-guardian-cap-helmet.html)\n  \n  ![Guardian Sports, the company that makes Guardian Caps, says more than half a million athletes at all levels now wear the helmet enhancements.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/29\/multimedia\/00BIZ-GUARDIAN-CAPS-1-gqcw\/00BIZ-GUARDIAN-CAPS-1-gqcw-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Audra Melton for The New York Times\n- [‘Melania’ Arrives With Strong Box Office Showing for a Documentary](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/31\/business\/melania-documentary-box-office.html)\n  \n  ![The first lady, Melania Trump, at a screening of “Melania” at the Kennedy Center in Washington on Thursday.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/31\/multimedia\/31biz-boxoffice-melania-qkhm\/31biz-boxoffice-melania-qkhm-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Doug Mills\/The New York Times\n\n### Editors’ Picks\n- [The High School Dancers Who Transform Into Warriors](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/02\/arts\/dance\/drill-down-military-drill-team-utah.html)\n  \n  ![Locked in: On the bus to the competition in Sandy, Utah, the Charelles listened to the music for their routines on repeat.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/08\/multimedia\/08cul-drill-down-promo\/08cul-drill-down-promo-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Cassidy Araiza for The New York Times\n- [‘Hey, How’s It Going? I’m Filing for Divorce Now.’](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/30\/style\/modern-love-hey-im-filing-for-divorce-now.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/01\/fashion\/01ST-MODERN-WANG\/01ST-MODERN-WANG-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Brian Rea\n\n### Trending in The Times\n- [The Grammys Take Naked to Another Level](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/01\/style\/grammys-chappell-roan-naked-dress.html)\n  \n  ![Chappell Roan arrived in a burgundy, opaque chiffon cape, a custom design by Mugler. Below her cape, an opaque floor-length skirt hung in place from nipple piercings.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/01\/multimedia\/ST-NAKED-GRAMMYS-kczb\/ST-NAKED-GRAMMYS-kczb-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Neilson Barnard\/Getty Images\n- [Opinion: Melania Trump’s Memoir Was Bad. The Movie Is Worse.](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/03\/opinion\/melania-trump-movie-memoir.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/03\/opinion\/03lozada-image\/03lozada-image-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Illustration by Sam Whitney\/The New York Times\n- [Why Many Doctors Don’t Like Low-Carb Diets](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/02\/well\/eat\/low-carb-diet-health-benefits.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/29\/well\/02WELL-LOW-CARB-image\/02WELL-LOW-CARB-image-square640-v2.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Hayley Watson\n- [The Rise of the All-Electric Luxury Kitchen](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/03\/realestate\/luxury-electric-kitchen-induction-trend.html)\n  \n  ![The architects behind New York City’s first all-electric skyscraper found that induction cooktops were ideal for their “clean” kitchen designs. ](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/03\/multimedia\/03-luxe-electric-kitchens-01-qtpk\/03-luxe-electric-kitchens-01-qtpk-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Matthew Williams\n- [Opinion: Pay More Attention to A.I.](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/31\/opinion\/artificial-intelligence-new-world.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/31\/opinion\/31douthat-image\/31douthat-image-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Illustration by Sam Whitney\/The New York Times; Source image by KenWiedemann\/Getty Images\n- [Heavy Snowfall in Japan Kills Dozens](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/video\/world\/asia\/100000010686677\/japan-snow-deaths.html)\n  \n  ![The Tottori Sand Dunes in Tottori, Japan, last month.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/03\/multimedia\/03xp-japan-hkbp\/03xp-japan-hkbp-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Mizuki Sakai\/Kyodo News, via Associated Press\n- [18 Off Broadway Shows (and Some Puppets) to Defrost Your February](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/01\/theater\/off-broadway-shows.html)\n  \n  ![Owen Teague and Abbey Lee in “Blackout Songs” at the Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space in Manhattan.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/01\/arts\/01cul-off-broadway-roundup-sub\/01cul-off-broadway-roundup-sub-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Emilio Madrid\n- [Does This Angel Look Familiar? A Modern Face Appears in a Rome Fresco.](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/02\/world\/europe\/angel-meloni-face-rome-church.html)\n  \n  ![A restored angel fresco with a figure resembling Giorgia Meloni in the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Lucina, in Rome.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/02\/multimedia\/02int-ITALY-MELONI-hfwm\/02int-ITALY-MELONI-hfwm-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Image by Vincenzo Livieri\/Reuters\n- [Gaza Crossing to Egypt Reopens in Step Forward for Fragile Cease-Fire](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/02\/world\/middleeast\/gaza-rafah-border-crossing.html)\n  \n  ![A medical convoy carrying patients in Khan Younis, Gaza, heading for the Rafah crossing on Monday. The opening of the crossing is expected to expedite the exit of thousands of sick and wounded people waiting for treatment abroad.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/02\/multimedia\/02Rafah-opening-01-bphm\/02Rafah-opening-01-bphm-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Saher Alghorra for The New York Times\n- [Is the Personal Political? Five Takeaways From Gavin Newsom’s New Book](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/01\/us\/politics\/gavin-newsom-memoir-takeaways.html)\n  \n  ![Gavin Newsom has emerged as one of the Democratic Party’s most prominent foils to President Trump.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/30\/multimedia\/pol-newsom-takeaways-hqmb\/pol-newsom-takeaways-hqmb-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Gabriela Bhaskar\/The New York Times\n\nAdvertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/07\/11\/business\/stock-market-melt-up-downturn.html#after-bottom)\n\n## Site Index\n[Go to Home Page »](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/)\n\nNews\n\n- [Home Page](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/)\n- [U.S.](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/us)\n- [World](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/world)\n- [Politics](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/politics)\n- [New York](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/nyregion)\n- [Education](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/education)\n- [Sports](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/sports)\n- [Business](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/business)\n- [Tech](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/technology)\n- [Science](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/science)\n- [Weather](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/weather)\n- [The Great Read](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/spotlight\/the-great-read)\n- [Obituaries](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/obituaries)\n- [Headway](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/headway)\n- [Visual Investigations](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/spotlight\/visual-investigations)\n- [The Magazine](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/magazine)\n\nArts\n\n- [Book Review](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/books\/review)\n- [Best Sellers Book List](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/books\/best-sellers\/)\n- [Dance](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/arts\/dance)\n- [Movies](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/movies)\n- [Music](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/arts\/music)\n- [Pop Culture](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/spotlight\/pop-culture)\n- [Television](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/arts\/television)\n- [Theater](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/theater)\n- [Visual Arts](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/arts\/design)\n\nLifestyle\n\n- [Health](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/health)\n- [Well](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/well)\n- [Food](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/food)\n- [Restaurant Reviews](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/reviews\/dining)\n- [Love](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/fashion\/weddings)\n- [Travel](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/travel)\n- [Style](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/style)\n- [Fashion](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/fashion)\n- [Real Estate](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/realestate)\n- [T Magazine](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/t-magazine)\n\nOpinion\n\n- [Today's Opinion](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/opinion)\n- [Columnists](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/opinion\/columnists)\n- [Editorials](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/opinion\/editorials)\n- [Guest Essays](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/opinion\/contributors)\n- [Op-Docs](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/column\/op-docs)\n- [Letters](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/opinion\/letters)\n- [Sunday Opinion](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/opinion\/sunday)\n- [Opinion Video](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/spotlight\/opinion-video)\n- [Opinion Audio](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/series\/opinion-audio)\n\nMore\n\n- [Audio](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/spotlight\/podcasts)\n- [Games](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/crosswords)\n- [Cooking](https:\/\/cooking.nytimes.com\/)\n- [Wirecutter](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/wirecutter\/)\n- [The Athletic](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/)\n- [Jobs](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/jobs)\n- [Video](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/video)\n- [Graphics](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/spotlight\/graphics)\n- [Trending](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/trending\/)\n- [Live Events](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/spotlight\/nyt-events)\n- [Corrections](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/corrections)\n- [Reader Center](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/reader-center)\n- [TimesMachine](https:\/\/timesmachine.nytimes.com\/browser)\n- [The Learning Network](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/learning)\n- [School of The NYT](https:\/\/nytedu.com\/)\n- [inEducation](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/spotlight\/nytimesineducation)\n\n### News\n- [Home Page](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/)\n- [U.S.](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/us)\n- [World](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/world)\n- [Politics](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/politics)\n- [New York](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/nyregion)\n- [Education](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/education)\n- [Sports](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/sports)\n- [Business](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/business)\n- [Tech](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/technology)\n- [Science](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/science)\n- [Weather](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/weather)\n- [The Great Read](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/spotlight\/the-great-read)\n- [Obituaries](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/obituaries)\n- [Headway](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/headway)\n- [Visual Investigations](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/spotlight\/visual-investigations)\n- [The Magazine](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/magazine)\n\n### Arts\n- [Book Review](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/books\/review)\n- [Best Sellers Book List](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/books\/best-sellers\/)\n- [Dance](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/arts\/dance)\n- [Movies](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/movies)\n- [Music](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/arts\/music)\n- [Pop Culture](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/spotlight\/pop-culture)\n- [Television](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/arts\/television)\n- [Theater](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/theater)\n- [Visual Arts](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/arts\/design)\n\n### Lifestyle\n- [Health](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/health)\n- [Well](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/well)\n- [Food](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/food)\n- [Restaurant Reviews](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/reviews\/dining)\n- [Love](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/fashion\/weddings)\n- [Travel](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/travel)\n- [Style](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/style)\n- [Fashion](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/fashion)\n- [Real Estate](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/realestate)\n- [T Magazine](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/t-magazine)\n\n### Opinion\n- [Today's Opinion](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/opinion)\n- [Columnists](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/opinion\/columnists)\n- [Editorials](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/opinion\/editorials)\n- [Guest Essays](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/opinion\/contributors)\n- [Op-Docs](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/column\/op-docs)\n- [Letters](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/opinion\/letters)\n- [Sunday Opinion](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/opinion\/sunday)\n- [Opinion Video](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/spotlight\/opinion-video)\n- [Opinion Audio](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/series\/opinion-audio)\n\n### More\n- [Audio](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/spotlight\/podcasts)\n- [Games](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/crosswords)\n- [Cooking](https:\/\/cooking.nytimes.com\/)\n- [Wirecutter](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/wirecutter\/)\n- [The Athletic](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/)\n- [Jobs](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/jobs)\n- [Video](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/video)\n- [Graphics](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/spotlight\/graphics)\n- [Trending](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/trending\/)\n- [Live Events](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/spotlight\/nyt-events)\n- [Corrections](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/corrections)\n- [Reader Center](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/reader-center)\n- [TimesMachine](https:\/\/timesmachine.nytimes.com\/browser)\n- [The Learning Network](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/learning)\n- [School of The NYT](https:\/\/nytedu.com\/)\n- [inEducation](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/spotlight\/nytimesineducation)\n\n### Account\n- [Subscribe](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/subscription)\n- [Manage My Account](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/account)\n- [Home Delivery](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/subscription\/home-delivery)\n- [Gift Subscriptions](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/gift)\n\n- [Group Subscriptions](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/subscription\/groups?Pardot_Campaign_Code_Form_Input=89FQX)\n- [Gift Articles](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/gift-articles)\n- [Email Newsletters](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/newsletters)\n\n- [NYT Licensing](https:\/\/nytlicensing.com\/)\n- [Replica Edition](https:\/\/nytimes.pressreader.com\/)\n- [Times Store](https:\/\/store.nytimes.com\/)\n\n## Site Information Navigation\n- [© 2026 The New York Times Company](https:\/\/help.nytimes.com\/hc\/en-us\/articles\/115014792127-Copyright-Notice)\n\n- [NYTCo](https:\/\/www.nytco.com\/)\n- [Contact Us](https:\/\/help.nytimes.com\/hc\/en-us\/articles\/115015385887-Contact-The-New-York-Times)\n- [Accessibility](https:\/\/help.nytimes.com\/hc\/en-us\/articles\/115015727108-Accessibility)\n- [Work with us](https:\/\/www.nytco.com\/careers\/)\n- [Advertise](https:\/\/advertising.nytimes.com\/)\n- [T Brand Studio](https:\/\/advertising.nytimes.com\/custom-content\/)\n- [Privacy Policy](https:\/\/help.nytimes.com\/hc\/en-us\/articles\/10940941449492-The-New-York-Times-Company-Privacy-Policy)\n- [Cookie Policy](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/privacy\/cookie-policy)\n- [Terms of Service](https:\/\/help.nytimes.com\/hc\/en-us\/articles\/115014893428-Terms-of-Service)\n- [Terms of Sale](https:\/\/help.nytimes.com\/hc\/en-us\/articles\/115014893968-Terms-of-Sale)\n- [Site Map](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/sitemap\/)\n- [Canada](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/ca\/)\n- [International](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/international\/)\n- [Help](https:\/\/help.nytimes.com\/hc\/en-us)\n- [Subscriptions](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/subscription?campaignId=37WXW)","attrs_readable_markdown":"Advertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/07\/11\/business\/stock-market-melt-up-downturn.html#after-top)\n\nStrategies\n\nTraders have repeatedly shrugged off President Trump’s disruptive tariff wars and fiscal policy, pushing U.S. stock prices back into expensive territory, our columnist says.\n\n![An illustration of black tags with dollar signs hanging on white strings, with the bottoms of the tags melting into a puddle.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/07\/13\/business\/13strategies-illo\/13strategies-illo-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nCredit...Giulio Bonasera\n\nPublished July 11, 2025Updated July 12, 2025\n\nMarket meltdowns have been a big worry lately, and for good reason. With President Trump imposing the highest tariffs since the Great Depression and enacting myriad other disruptive policies, the threat of another market crash can’t be ignored.\n\nYet despite an 18.9 percent downturn in the S\\&P 500 earlier this year, the stock market has [rebounded](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/07\/04\/business\/markets-investment-returns-trump.html). It has continually shrugged off shocks that, in previous years, may have set off a prolonged bear market.\n\nIn fact, stocks have become expensive again. While the potential for a serious market downturn hasn’t vanished, I think it’s also time to begin thinking about another problem: the danger of a market melt-up.\n\nBy many measures, we’re already in perilously overvalued territory. On a historical basis, share prices are high in relation to corporate earnings, assets and the size of the overall economy.\n\nI don’t want to go too far with this. The U.S. stock market isn’t nearly as expensive as it was at the height of the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s and early 2000. But it is increasingly pricey — surprisingly so, when you consider the repeated blows to market sentiment dealt by the Trump administration.\n\nTariffs re-emerged as a major issue over the past week. The administration issued an array of announcements: Tariffs will increase, be delayed, not be delayed, be imposed on copper, be negotiated lower, be made permanent, and on and on. Who really knows? The stock market has been absorbing this information, stumbling from time to time but then regaining its footing. While the economic impact of the tariffs has barely been felt yet, the stock market remains much higher than it was at the beginning of the year.\n\n## How High?\nOne sign that the “market is a little out over its skis,” as Bespoke Investment Group put it in a note to clients this past week, is that shares of companies that are making no profit have been rising faster than those that are deeply profitable. Bespoke, an independent financial research firm, said, “For stocks that are losing money, generally speaking, the bigger the losses the better the returns.”\n\nCompanies with marvelous narratives about future returns are capturing investors’ imaginations. For example, a leading stock in the Russell 3000 index, with a gain of more than 500 percent this year, was Aeva Technologies. It makes sensors for robots, autonomous vehicles and drones — all hot items these days. Yet the company is losing a ton of money.\n\nNo matter. In the current market, the sky is the limit. Referring to the astonishing stock performance of money-losing companies, Bespoke said: “This is, to put it mildly, an unsustainable dynamic. Valuations can only do so much to support markets before the trend reverses. Of course, there are other sources of market return other than multiple expansion of no-earnings companies, but this dynamic is still emblematic of a market that is starting to get carried away with itself.”\n\nMoneymaking companies are receiving remarkably high valuations, too. Take Nvidia, which this past week became the first company to pierce the \\$4 trillion threshold for stock market capitalization. Nvidia is highly profitable, and it designs many of the advanced chips that power artificial intelligence Nothing seems to be more prized than A.I. in the market right now.\n\nNvidia stock is extremely expensive: Its price-to-earnings ratio is above 50:1, according to FactSet. That means that an investor must pay more than \\$50 for every \\$1 of the company’s earnings. Compared with the start of 2023, when its price was 250 times its earnings, the company may look like a bargain. Even so, its current valuation implies that its profits will grow at lightning speed for decades to come. The market may be comfortable with that assumption, but the law of gravity makes me [question](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/02\/22\/business\/nvidia-price-to-sales-ratio.html) whether Nvidia’s price is sustainable.\n\n## Booms and Busts\nSteep market valuations alone don’t cause price declines, but in the past, they have eventually led to trouble. [Alan Greenspan](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1996\/12\/07\/business\/a-buried-message-loudly-heard.html), the former Federal Reserve chairman, warned elliptically of excessively high stock prices in December 1996, when he famously asked, “How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions?”\n\nHe didn’t provide a clear answer. In response to Mr. Greenspan’s words, the market foundered but then shot up further. It wasn’t until March 2000 that stock prices — by then wildly exorbitant by most measures — ultimately crashed.\n\nIrrational exuberance has become standard Wall Street jargon. Robert Shiller, the Yale economist and Nobel laureate, [used](https:\/\/press.princeton.edu\/books\/paperback\/9780691173122\/irrational-exuberance?srsltid=AfmBOoop4cdds5pTYCjZoeZwEBPTSblz78gRz9daZZG9upWXPw5FaRCK) the phrase as the title for an important book.\n\nMelt-up isn’t as widely used, but it may be on the verge of becoming so.\n\n“The melt-up in risk assets continues,” HSBC, the global bank based in London, warned recently.\n\nIt saw two distinct possibilities: an intensifying melt-up reflecting investor exuberance or a meltdown in the face of what could turn out to be endlessly troubling developments, many of them meted out by the Trump administration.\n\n“The bearish narrative can point to tariff rates,” the bank wrote. But, HSBC also said, Wall Street analysts have lowered expectations for corporate earnings to a level that most companies are likely to exceed. Therefore, it concluded, “We have the perfect recipe for the broad-based melt-up in risk assets to continue.”\n\nMelt-ups have long been part of the vocabulary of Edward Yardeni, the independent Wall Street economist and strategist. At the moment, he said, the market is “sort of, kind of, in a melt-up.”\n\nReferring to the sharp stock downturn earlier this year, he added, “Just look at the way this correction has been reversed, it’s been a melt-up.” Stock valuations are “pretty rich,” he said, and people in the markets are “back to believing” that artificial intelligence is “a miracle technology.”\n\nIn an email, he estimated a range of “subjective probabilities” for the stock market. There is a 60 percent chance that the bull market will continue, he said, a 25 percent chance of a bear market caused by a recession, and a third possibility: a 15 percent chance of a melt-up.\n\nIn a melt-up, stocks would spiral much higher, generating big gains on an unstable base.\n\nThe gains would be wonderful. But any provocation or disruption could set off a severe downturn.\n\n## Don’t Get Too Excited\n“Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” That’s an adage often attributed to the British economist John Maynard Keynes, though I’ve never found proof that he said it. Nevertheless, it’s apt. I worry about market melt-ups but rarely feel confident enough about my observations to do anything about it in my investing life.\n\nOnly occasionally, in my view, is it completely obvious that the market is so high that it must fall, or so low that it must rise. (Such moments are usually accompanied by a major shift in policy by the Federal Reserve — lowering interest rates sharply at the bottom of a bear market, or raising them when the economy is so red hot that it is on the verge of burning.) This isn’t one of those times. In the second Trump administration, anything is possible for the stock market. It could rise, fall or, more likely, be extremely volatile and vacillate between extremes.\n\nAs a long-term investor using mainly diversified global index funds, I try to ride out the market’s madness, using bonds and cash (much of it in money-market funds) to buffer me from severe stock downturns. I’ve bulked up that buffer this year.\n\nWhile I take a long-term view, I would prefer a calmer ride. Who needs the agony of a stock market decline, even if you don’t intend to touch the money for decades? More important, many people — including those in retirement or planning to start it soon — can’t handle major downturns. And market crashes are often associated with recessions.\n\nMelt-ups are much more pleasant than downturns but they cause major problems, too, because they are often followed by crashes.\n\nIt would be far better if markets were calm and orderly. So I’m hoping we have neither a melt-up nor a meltdown now. A traditionally bumpy market, with setbacks but an upward arc, is in nearly everyone’s interest. So don’t get too excited if markets start to fly toward the sky.\n\nA version of this article appears in print on July 13, 2025, Section BU, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: The Increasing Danger of a Market Melt-Up. [Order Reprints](https:\/\/nytimes.wrightsmedia.com\/) \\| [Today’s Paper](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/todayspaper) \\| [Subscribe](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/subscriptions\/Multiproduct\/lp8HYKU.html?campaignId=48JQY)\n\n## Related Content\n[Strategies](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/column\/business-strategies)\n\nJeff Sommer’s column on markets, finance and the economy.\n\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/01\/business\/30strategies-illo\/30strategies-illo-thumbLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Davide Bonazzi\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/25\/business\/25strategies-illo\/25strategies-illo-thumbLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Dan Page\n- Norlys Perez\/Reuters\n\n[More in Business](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/business)\n\n- ![It’s unclear how much any of the beneficiaries to Jeffrey Epstein’s estate will receive. Its value has dropped significantly since his death, owing to payment of taxes, legal fees and settlements to victims of his sexual abuse.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/03\/multimedia\/00biz-Epstein-estate-pvfm\/00biz-Epstein-estate-pvfm-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  via House Oversight Democrats\n- ![Ms. Oliver in 2021, when she was 101. “She represented that no-nonsense Mainer who just got up every day and did what they had to do,” said Barbara Walsh, the author of a children’s book about Mrs. Oliver.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/03\/multimedia\/03Oliver--01-ljvh\/03Oliver--01-ljvh-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Robert F. Bukaty\/Associated Press\n- ![Guardian Sports, the company that makes Guardian Caps, says more than half a million athletes at all levels now wear the helmet enhancements.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/29\/multimedia\/00BIZ-GUARDIAN-CAPS-1-gqcw\/00BIZ-GUARDIAN-CAPS-1-gqcw-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Audra Melton for The New York Times\n- ![The first lady, Melania Trump, at a screening of “Melania” at the Kennedy Center in Washington on Thursday.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/31\/multimedia\/31biz-boxoffice-melania-qkhm\/31biz-boxoffice-melania-qkhm-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Doug Mills\/The New York Times\n\nEditors’ Picks\n\n- ![Locked in: On the bus to the competition in Sandy, Utah, the Charelles listened to the music for their routines on repeat.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/08\/multimedia\/08cul-drill-down-promo\/08cul-drill-down-promo-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Cassidy Araiza for The New York Times\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/01\/fashion\/01ST-MODERN-WANG\/01ST-MODERN-WANG-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Brian Rea\n\nTrending in The Times\n\n- ![Chappell Roan arrived in a burgundy, opaque chiffon cape, a custom design by Mugler. Below her cape, an opaque floor-length skirt hung in place from nipple piercings.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/01\/multimedia\/ST-NAKED-GRAMMYS-kczb\/ST-NAKED-GRAMMYS-kczb-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Neilson Barnard\/Getty Images\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/03\/opinion\/03lozada-image\/03lozada-image-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Illustration by Sam Whitney\/The New York Times\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/29\/well\/02WELL-LOW-CARB-image\/02WELL-LOW-CARB-image-square640-v2.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Hayley Watson\n- ![The architects behind New York City’s first all-electric skyscraper found that induction cooktops were ideal for their “clean” kitchen designs. ](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/03\/multimedia\/03-luxe-electric-kitchens-01-qtpk\/03-luxe-electric-kitchens-01-qtpk-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Matthew Williams\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/31\/opinion\/31douthat-image\/31douthat-image-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Illustration by Sam Whitney\/The New York Times; Source image by KenWiedemann\/Getty Images\n- ![The Tottori Sand Dunes in Tottori, Japan, last month.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/03\/multimedia\/03xp-japan-hkbp\/03xp-japan-hkbp-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Mizuki Sakai\/Kyodo News, via Associated Press\n- ![Owen Teague and Abbey Lee in “Blackout Songs” at the Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space in Manhattan.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/01\/arts\/01cul-off-broadway-roundup-sub\/01cul-off-broadway-roundup-sub-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Emilio Madrid\n- ![A restored angel fresco with a figure resembling Giorgia Meloni in the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Lucina, in Rome.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/02\/multimedia\/02int-ITALY-MELONI-hfwm\/02int-ITALY-MELONI-hfwm-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Image by Vincenzo Livieri\/Reuters\n- ![A medical convoy carrying patients in Khan Younis, Gaza, heading for the Rafah crossing on Monday. The opening of the crossing is expected to expedite the exit of thousands of sick and wounded people waiting for treatment abroad.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/02\/multimedia\/02Rafah-opening-01-bphm\/02Rafah-opening-01-bphm-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Saher Alghorra for The New York Times\n- ![Gavin Newsom has emerged as one of the Democratic Party’s most prominent foils to President Trump.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/30\/multimedia\/pol-newsom-takeaways-hqmb\/pol-newsom-takeaways-hqmb-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Gabriela Bhaskar\/The New York Times\n\nAdvertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/07\/11\/business\/stock-market-melt-up-downturn.html#after-bottom)","meta_canonical":null}

3. Robots.txt Check

Query:

Response:

4. Spam/Ban Check

Query:

Response:

5. Seen Status Check

ℹ️ Skipped - page is already crawled

📄

INDEXABLE

✅

CRAWLED

2 months ago

🤖

ROBOTS ALLOWED

Page Info Filters

Filter	Status	Condition	Details
HTTP status	PASS	`download_http_code = 200`	HTTP 200
Age cutoff	PASS	`download_stamp > now() - 6 MONTH`	2.4 months ago
History drop	PASS	`isNull(history_drop_reason)`	No drop reason
Spam/ban	PASS	`fh_dont_index != 1 AND ml_spam_score = 0`	ml_spam_score=0
Canonical	PASS	`meta_canonical IS NULL OR = '' OR = src_unparsed`	Not set

Page Details

Property	Value
URL	https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/business/stock-market-melt-up-downturn.html
Last Crawled	2026-02-04 10:21:05 (2 months ago)
First Indexed	2025-07-11 13:33:47 (9 months ago)
HTTP Status Code	200
Meta Title	The Danger of a Stock Market Melt-Up - The New York Times
Meta Description	Traders have repeatedly shrugged off President Trump’s disruptive tariff wars and fiscal policy, pushing U.S. stock prices back into expensive territory, our columnist says.
Meta Canonical	null
Boilerpipe Text	Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Strategies Traders have repeatedly shrugged off President Trump’s disruptive tariff wars and fiscal policy, pushing U.S. stock prices back into expensive territory, our columnist says. Credit... Giulio Bonasera Published July 11, 2025 Updated July 12, 2025 Market meltdowns have been a big worry lately, and for good reason. With President Trump imposing the highest tariffs since the Great Depression and enacting myriad other disruptive policies, the threat of another market crash can’t be ignored. Yet despite an 18.9 percent downturn in the S&P 500 earlier this year, the stock market has rebounded . It has continually shrugged off shocks that, in previous years, may have set off a prolonged bear market. In fact, stocks have become expensive again. While the potential for a serious market downturn hasn’t vanished, I think it’s also time to begin thinking about another problem: the danger of a market melt-up. By many measures, we’re already in perilously overvalued territory. On a historical basis, share prices are high in relation to corporate earnings, assets and the size of the overall economy. I don’t want to go too far with this. The U.S. stock market isn’t nearly as expensive as it was at the height of the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s and early 2000. But it is increasingly pricey — surprisingly so, when you consider the repeated blows to market sentiment dealt by the Trump administration. Tariffs re-emerged as a major issue over the past week. The administration issued an array of announcements: Tariffs will increase, be delayed, not be delayed, be imposed on copper, be negotiated lower, be made permanent, and on and on. Who really knows? The stock market has been absorbing this information, stumbling from time to time but then regaining its footing. While the economic impact of the tariffs has barely been felt yet, the stock market remains much higher than it was at the beginning of the year. How High? One sign that the “market is a little out over its skis,” as Bespoke Investment Group put it in a note to clients this past week, is that shares of companies that are making no profit have been rising faster than those that are deeply profitable. Bespoke, an independent financial research firm, said, “For stocks that are losing money, generally speaking, the bigger the losses the better the returns.” Companies with marvelous narratives about future returns are capturing investors’ imaginations. For example, a leading stock in the Russell 3000 index, with a gain of more than 500 percent this year, was Aeva Technologies. It makes sensors for robots, autonomous vehicles and drones — all hot items these days. Yet the company is losing a ton of money. No matter. In the current market, the sky is the limit. Referring to the astonishing stock performance of money-losing companies, Bespoke said: “This is, to put it mildly, an unsustainable dynamic. Valuations can only do so much to support markets before the trend reverses. Of course, there are other sources of market return other than multiple expansion of no-earnings companies, but this dynamic is still emblematic of a market that is starting to get carried away with itself.” Moneymaking companies are receiving remarkably high valuations, too. Take Nvidia, which this past week became the first company to pierce the $4 trillion threshold for stock market capitalization. Nvidia is highly profitable, and it designs many of the advanced chips that power artificial intelligence Nothing seems to be more prized than A.I. in the market right now. Nvidia stock is extremely expensive: Its price-to-earnings ratio is above 50:1, according to FactSet. That means that an investor must pay more than $50 for every $1 of the company’s earnings. Compared with the start of 2023, when its price was 250 times its earnings, the company may look like a bargain. Even so, its current valuation implies that its profits will grow at lightning speed for decades to come. The market may be comfortable with that assumption, but the law of gravity makes me question whether Nvidia’s price is sustainable. Booms and Busts Steep market valuations alone don’t cause price declines, but in the past, they have eventually led to trouble. Alan Greenspan , the former Federal Reserve chairman, warned elliptically of excessively high stock prices in December 1996, when he famously asked, “How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions?” He didn’t provide a clear answer. In response to Mr. Greenspan’s words, the market foundered but then shot up further. It wasn’t until March 2000 that stock prices — by then wildly exorbitant by most measures — ultimately crashed. Irrational exuberance has become standard Wall Street jargon. Robert Shiller, the Yale economist and Nobel laureate, used the phrase as the title for an important book. Melt-up isn’t as widely used, but it may be on the verge of becoming so. “The melt-up in risk assets continues,” HSBC, the global bank based in London, warned recently. It saw two distinct possibilities: an intensifying melt-up reflecting investor exuberance or a meltdown in the face of what could turn out to be endlessly troubling developments, many of them meted out by the Trump administration. “The bearish narrative can point to tariff rates,” the bank wrote. But, HSBC also said, Wall Street analysts have lowered expectations for corporate earnings to a level that most companies are likely to exceed. Therefore, it concluded, “We have the perfect recipe for the broad-based melt-up in risk assets to continue.” Melt-ups have long been part of the vocabulary of Edward Yardeni, the independent Wall Street economist and strategist. At the moment, he said, the market is “sort of, kind of, in a melt-up.” Referring to the sharp stock downturn earlier this year, he added, “Just look at the way this correction has been reversed, it’s been a melt-up.” Stock valuations are “pretty rich,” he said, and people in the markets are “back to believing” that artificial intelligence is “a miracle technology.” In an email, he estimated a range of “subjective probabilities” for the stock market. There is a 60 percent chance that the bull market will continue, he said, a 25 percent chance of a bear market caused by a recession, and a third possibility: a 15 percent chance of a melt-up. In a melt-up, stocks would spiral much higher, generating big gains on an unstable base. The gains would be wonderful. But any provocation or disruption could set off a severe downturn. Don’t Get Too Excited “Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” That’s an adage often attributed to the British economist John Maynard Keynes, though I’ve never found proof that he said it. Nevertheless, it’s apt. I worry about market melt-ups but rarely feel confident enough about my observations to do anything about it in my investing life. Only occasionally, in my view, is it completely obvious that the market is so high that it must fall, or so low that it must rise. (Such moments are usually accompanied by a major shift in policy by the Federal Reserve — lowering interest rates sharply at the bottom of a bear market, or raising them when the economy is so red hot that it is on the verge of burning.) This isn’t one of those times. In the second Trump administration, anything is possible for the stock market. It could rise, fall or, more likely, be extremely volatile and vacillate between extremes. As a long-term investor using mainly diversified global index funds, I try to ride out the market’s madness, using bonds and cash (much of it in money-market funds) to buffer me from severe stock downturns. I’ve bulked up that buffer this year. While I take a long-term view, I would prefer a calmer ride. Who needs the agony of a stock market decline, even if you don’t intend to touch the money for decades? More important, many people — including those in retirement or planning to start it soon — can’t handle major downturns. And market crashes are often associated with recessions. Melt-ups are much more pleasant than downturns but they cause major problems, too, because they are often followed by crashes. It would be far better if markets were calm and orderly. So I’m hoping we have neither a melt-up nor a meltdown now. A traditionally bumpy market, with setbacks but an upward arc, is in nearly everyone’s interest. So don’t get too excited if markets start to fly toward the sky. A version of this article appears in print on July 13, 2025 , Section BU, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: The Increasing Danger of a Market Melt-Up . Order Reprints \| Today’s Paper \| Subscribe Related Content Strategies Jeff Sommer’s column on markets, finance and the economy. Davide Bonazzi Dan Page Norlys Perez/Reuters More in Business via House Oversight Democrats Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press Audra Melton for The New York Times Doug Mills/The New York Times Editors’ Picks Cassidy Araiza for The New York Times Brian Rea Trending in The Times Neilson Barnard/Getty Images Illustration by Sam Whitney/The New York Times Hayley Watson Matthew Williams Illustration by Sam Whitney/The New York Times; Source image by KenWiedemann/Getty Images Mizuki Sakai/Kyodo News, via Associated Press Emilio Madrid Image by Vincenzo Livieri/Reuters Saher Alghorra for The New York Times Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Markdown	[Skip to content](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/business/stock-market-melt-up-downturn.html#site-content)[Skip to site index](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/business/stock-market-melt-up-downturn.html#site-index) Search & Section Navigation Section Navigation Search [Business](https://www.nytimes.com/section/business) [Log in](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Fsubscription%2Fonboarding-offer%3FcampaignId%3D7JFJX%26EXIT_URI%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2025%252F07%252F11%252Fbusiness%252Fstock-market-melt-up-downturn.html&asset=masthead) Wednesday, February 4, 2026 [Today’s Paper](https://www.nytimes.com/section/todayspaper) Trump Administration - [Epstein Files](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/01/us/trump-epstein-files.html) - [A Year of Tariffs](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/business/trump-tariffs-one-year-later.html) - [Kennedy Center Renovations](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/us/politics/kennedy-center-trump-construction.html) - [Policy Lawsuits](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/us/trump-administration-lawsuits.html) - [Tariff Tracker](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/07/28/business/economy/trump-tariff-tracker.html) Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/business/stock-market-melt-up-downturn.html#after-top) Supported by [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/business/stock-market-melt-up-downturn.html#after-sponsor) Strategies # The Danger of a Market Melt-Up Traders have repeatedly shrugged off President Trump’s disruptive tariff wars and fiscal policy, pushing U.S. stock prices back into expensive territory, our columnist says. - Share full article - 405 ![An illustration of black tags with dollar signs hanging on white strings, with the bottoms of the tags melting into a puddle.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/07/13/business/13strategies-illo/13strategies-illo-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Credit...Giulio Bonasera [![Jeff Sommer](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/02/20/multimedia/author-jeff-sommer/author-jeff-sommer-thumbLarge-v2.png)](https://www.nytimes.com/by/jeff-sommer) By [Jeff Sommer](https://www.nytimes.com/by/jeff-sommer) Jeff Sommer writes [Strategies](https://www.nytimes.com/column/business-strategies), a weekly column on markets, finance and the economy. Published July 11, 2025Updated July 12, 2025 Market meltdowns have been a big worry lately, and for good reason. With President Trump imposing the highest tariffs since the Great Depression and enacting myriad other disruptive policies, the threat of another market crash can’t be ignored. Yet despite an 18.9 percent downturn in the S\&P 500 earlier this year, the stock market has [rebounded](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/04/business/markets-investment-returns-trump.html). It has continually shrugged off shocks that, in previous years, may have set off a prolonged bear market. In fact, stocks have become expensive again. While the potential for a serious market downturn hasn’t vanished, I think it’s also time to begin thinking about another problem: the danger of a market melt-up. By many measures, we’re already in perilously overvalued territory. On a historical basis, share prices are high in relation to corporate earnings, assets and the size of the overall economy. I don’t want to go too far with this. The U.S. stock market isn’t nearly as expensive as it was at the height of the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s and early 2000. But it is increasingly pricey — surprisingly so, when you consider the repeated blows to market sentiment dealt by the Trump administration. Tariffs re-emerged as a major issue over the past week. The administration issued an array of announcements: Tariffs will increase, be delayed, not be delayed, be imposed on copper, be negotiated lower, be made permanent, and on and on. Who really knows? The stock market has been absorbing this information, stumbling from time to time but then regaining its footing. While the economic impact of the tariffs has barely been felt yet, the stock market remains much higher than it was at the beginning of the year. ## How High? One sign that the “market is a little out over its skis,” as Bespoke Investment Group put it in a note to clients this past week, is that shares of companies that are making no profit have been rising faster than those that are deeply profitable. Bespoke, an independent financial research firm, said, “For stocks that are losing money, generally speaking, the bigger the losses the better the returns.” Companies with marvelous narratives about future returns are capturing investors’ imaginations. For example, a leading stock in the Russell 3000 index, with a gain of more than 500 percent this year, was Aeva Technologies. It makes sensors for robots, autonomous vehicles and drones — all hot items these days. Yet the company is losing a ton of money. No matter. In the current market, the sky is the limit. Referring to the astonishing stock performance of money-losing companies, Bespoke said: “This is, to put it mildly, an unsustainable dynamic. Valuations can only do so much to support markets before the trend reverses. Of course, there are other sources of market return other than multiple expansion of no-earnings companies, but this dynamic is still emblematic of a market that is starting to get carried away with itself.” ## Editors’ Picks [![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/01/multimedia/00biz-corneroffice-nestle-zfch/00biz-corneroffice-nestle-zfch-thumbLarge.jpg)Nestlé’s Chief Is in Turnaround Mode. He Drinks 8 Cups of Coffee a Day.](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/01/business/nestles-philipp-navratil.html) [![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/02/multimedia/02TBR-Klosterman-review-sub2-pwqf/02TBR-Klosterman-review-sub2-pwqf-thumbLarge.jpg)Is Football Doomed? Chuck Klosterman Thinks So.](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/books/review/chuck-klosterman-football.html) [![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/03/multimedia/03re-Walden1-wcvl/03re-Walden1-wcvl-thumbLarge.jpg)They Went to the Woods Because They Wished to Live Deliberately](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/realestate/walden-cabin-thoreau-replica-building.html) Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/business/stock-market-melt-up-downturn.html#after-pp_edpick) Moneymaking companies are receiving remarkably high valuations, too. Take Nvidia, which this past week became the first company to pierce the \$4 trillion threshold for stock market capitalization. Nvidia is highly profitable, and it designs many of the advanced chips that power artificial intelligence Nothing seems to be more prized than A.I. in the market right now. Nvidia stock is extremely expensive: Its price-to-earnings ratio is above 50:1, according to FactSet. That means that an investor must pay more than \$50 for every \$1 of the company’s earnings. Compared with the start of 2023, when its price was 250 times its earnings, the company may look like a bargain. Even so, its current valuation implies that its profits will grow at lightning speed for decades to come. The market may be comfortable with that assumption, but the law of gravity makes me [question](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/22/business/nvidia-price-to-sales-ratio.html) whether Nvidia’s price is sustainable. ## Booms and Busts Steep market valuations alone don’t cause price declines, but in the past, they have eventually led to trouble. [Alan Greenspan](https://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/07/business/a-buried-message-loudly-heard.html), the former Federal Reserve chairman, warned elliptically of excessively high stock prices in December 1996, when he famously asked, “How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions?” He didn’t provide a clear answer. In response to Mr. Greenspan’s words, the market foundered but then shot up further. It wasn’t until March 2000 that stock prices — by then wildly exorbitant by most measures — ultimately crashed. Irrational exuberance has become standard Wall Street jargon. Robert Shiller, the Yale economist and Nobel laureate, [used](https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691173122/irrational-exuberance?srsltid=AfmBOoop4cdds5pTYCjZoeZwEBPTSblz78gRz9daZZG9upWXPw5FaRCK) the phrase as the title for an important book. Melt-up isn’t as widely used, but it may be on the verge of becoming so. “The melt-up in risk assets continues,” HSBC, the global bank based in London, warned recently. It saw two distinct possibilities: an intensifying melt-up reflecting investor exuberance or a meltdown in the face of what could turn out to be endlessly troubling developments, many of them meted out by the Trump administration. “The bearish narrative can point to tariff rates,” the bank wrote. But, HSBC also said, Wall Street analysts have lowered expectations for corporate earnings to a level that most companies are likely to exceed. Therefore, it concluded, “We have the perfect recipe for the broad-based melt-up in risk assets to continue.” Melt-ups have long been part of the vocabulary of Edward Yardeni, the independent Wall Street economist and strategist. At the moment, he said, the market is “sort of, kind of, in a melt-up.” Referring to the sharp stock downturn earlier this year, he added, “Just look at the way this correction has been reversed, it’s been a melt-up.” Stock valuations are “pretty rich,” he said, and people in the markets are “back to believing” that artificial intelligence is “a miracle technology.” In an email, he estimated a range of “subjective probabilities” for the stock market. There is a 60 percent chance that the bull market will continue, he said, a 25 percent chance of a bear market caused by a recession, and a third possibility: a 15 percent chance of a melt-up. In a melt-up, stocks would spiral much higher, generating big gains on an unstable base. The gains would be wonderful. But any provocation or disruption could set off a severe downturn. ## Don’t Get Too Excited “Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” That’s an adage often attributed to the British economist John Maynard Keynes, though I’ve never found proof that he said it. Nevertheless, it’s apt. I worry about market melt-ups but rarely feel confident enough about my observations to do anything about it in my investing life. Only occasionally, in my view, is it completely obvious that the market is so high that it must fall, or so low that it must rise. (Such moments are usually accompanied by a major shift in policy by the Federal Reserve — lowering interest rates sharply at the bottom of a bear market, or raising them when the economy is so red hot that it is on the verge of burning.) This isn’t one of those times. In the second Trump administration, anything is possible for the stock market. It could rise, fall or, more likely, be extremely volatile and vacillate between extremes. As a long-term investor using mainly diversified global index funds, I try to ride out the market’s madness, using bonds and cash (much of it in money-market funds) to buffer me from severe stock downturns. I’ve bulked up that buffer this year. While I take a long-term view, I would prefer a calmer ride. Who needs the agony of a stock market decline, even if you don’t intend to touch the money for decades? More important, many people — including those in retirement or planning to start it soon — can’t handle major downturns. And market crashes are often associated with recessions. Melt-ups are much more pleasant than downturns but they cause major problems, too, because they are often followed by crashes. It would be far better if markets were calm and orderly. So I’m hoping we have neither a melt-up nor a meltdown now. A traditionally bumpy market, with setbacks but an upward arc, is in nearly everyone’s interest. So don’t get too excited if markets start to fly toward the sky. More Strategies Columns by Jeff Sommer [![]()The Outlook for the Economy Has Improved. And Yet. Aug. 18, 2023](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/business/the-outlook-for-the-economy-has-improved-and-yet.html) [Jeff Sommer](https://www.nytimes.com/by/jeff-sommer) writes [Strategies](https://www.nytimes.com/column/business-strategies), a weekly column on markets, finance and the economy. A version of this article appears in print on July 13, 2025, Section BU, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: The Increasing Danger of a Market Melt-Up. [Order Reprints](https://nytimes.wrightsmedia.com/) \\| [Today’s Paper](https://www.nytimes.com/section/todayspaper) \\| [Subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscriptions/Multiproduct/lp8HYKU.html?campaignId=48JQY) See more on: [Edward Yardeni](https://www.nytimes.com/topic/edward-yardeni), [U.S. Politics](https://www.nytimes.com/section/politics), [Donald Trump](https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/donald-trump) Read 405 comments - Share full article - 405 * ## The Latest on the Trump Administration * - Call to ‘Nationalize’ Elections: President Trump [called for the Republican Party to “nationalize” voting in the United States](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/us/politics/trump-nationalize-elections.html), an aggressive rhetorical step that was likely to raise new worries about his administration’s efforts to involve itself in election matters. - ‘Project Vault’: President Trump rolled out a \$12 billion initiative [aimed at bolstering domestic stockpiles of strategic critical minerals](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/business/trump-critical-minerals-stockpile.html), as the United States looks to reduce its reliance on China for key components of technology that powers cars, computers and phones. - Kennedy Center Shutdown: [The Trump administration’s announcement](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/us/politics/trump-kennedy-center-renovation.html) to shut the center for a major overhaul led to [a swirl of confusion and anxiety among performers and patrons](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/arts/music/trumps-kennedy-center.html) about its future. - Threats to Gun Owners: Jeannine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, [threatened jail time for anyone who enters the capital with a gun](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/us/politics/pirro-dc-guns.html), including lawful owners. - An Unusual Call: Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, [brokered a call between President Trump and the F.B.I. agents](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/us/politics/trump-fbi-phone-call-georgia-gabbard.html) investigating the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, so the president could directly question them on the inquiry. * How We Report on the Trump Administration** Hundreds of readers asked about our coverage of the president. Times editors and reporters [responded to some of the most common questions](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/06/insider/how-the-new-york-times-reports-on-trump.html). ## Related Content ### [Strategies](https://www.nytimes.com/column/business-strategies) Jeff Sommer’s column on markets, finance and the economy. - [Your ‘Safe’ Stock Funds May Be Riskier Than You Think](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/business/stock-market-concentration-risk.html) ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/01/business/30strategies-illo/30strategies-illo-thumbLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Davide Bonazzi - [Low Rates Sound Great. But a Trump Fed Could Cause a Painful ‘Sugar High.’](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/23/business/trump-fed-interest-rates-inflation.html) ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/01/25/business/25strategies-illo/25strategies-illo-thumbLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Dan Page - [What’s Next for Cuba, Now That Its Main Oil Supplier Is Gone?](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/16/business/cuba-venezuela-mexico-oil-diplomacy.html) Norlys Perez/Reuters ### [More in Business](https://www.nytimes.com/section/business) - [Epstein’s Trust Reveals Who Would Inherit His Fortune](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/business/jeffrey-epstein-trust-inherit-karyna-shuliak.html) ![It’s unclear how much any of the beneficiaries to Jeffrey Epstein’s estate will receive. Its value has dropped significantly since his death, owing to payment of taxes, legal fees and settlements to victims of his sexual abuse.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/03/multimedia/00biz-Epstein-estate-pvfm/00biz-Epstein-estate-pvfm-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) via House Oversight Democrats - [Virginia Oliver, Maine’s ‘Lobster Lady’ and Folk Hero, Dies at 105](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/business/virginia-oliver-dead.html) ![Ms. Oliver in 2021, when she was 101. “She represented that no-nonsense Mainer who just got up every day and did what they had to do,” said Barbara Walsh, the author of a children’s book about Mrs. Oliver.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/03/multimedia/03Oliver--01-ljvh/03Oliver--01-ljvh-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press - [The Questionable Science Behind the Odd-Looking Football Helmets](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/business/super-bowl-guardian-cap-helmet.html) ![Guardian Sports, the company that makes Guardian Caps, says more than half a million athletes at all levels now wear the helmet enhancements.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/01/29/multimedia/00BIZ-GUARDIAN-CAPS-1-gqcw/00BIZ-GUARDIAN-CAPS-1-gqcw-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Audra Melton for The New York Times - [‘Melania’ Arrives With Strong Box Office Showing for a Documentary](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/31/business/melania-documentary-box-office.html) ![The first lady, Melania Trump, at a screening of “Melania” at the Kennedy Center in Washington on Thursday.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/01/31/multimedia/31biz-boxoffice-melania-qkhm/31biz-boxoffice-melania-qkhm-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Doug Mills/The New York Times ### Editors’ Picks - [The High School Dancers Who Transform Into Warriors](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/arts/dance/drill-down-military-drill-team-utah.html) ![Locked in: On the bus to the competition in Sandy, Utah, the Charelles listened to the music for their routines on repeat.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/08/multimedia/08cul-drill-down-promo/08cul-drill-down-promo-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Cassidy Araiza for The New York Times - [‘Hey, How’s It Going? I’m Filing for Divorce Now.’](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/style/modern-love-hey-im-filing-for-divorce-now.html) ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/01/fashion/01ST-MODERN-WANG/01ST-MODERN-WANG-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Brian Rea ### Trending in The Times - [The Grammys Take Naked to Another Level](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/01/style/grammys-chappell-roan-naked-dress.html) ![Chappell Roan arrived in a burgundy, opaque chiffon cape, a custom design by Mugler. Below her cape, an opaque floor-length skirt hung in place from nipple piercings.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/01/multimedia/ST-NAKED-GRAMMYS-kczb/ST-NAKED-GRAMMYS-kczb-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Neilson Barnard/Getty Images - [Opinion: Melania Trump’s Memoir Was Bad. The Movie Is Worse.](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/opinion/melania-trump-movie-memoir.html) ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/03/opinion/03lozada-image/03lozada-image-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Illustration by Sam Whitney/The New York Times - [Why Many Doctors Don’t Like Low-Carb Diets](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/well/eat/low-carb-diet-health-benefits.html) ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/01/29/well/02WELL-LOW-CARB-image/02WELL-LOW-CARB-image-square640-v2.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Hayley Watson - [The Rise of the All-Electric Luxury Kitchen](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/realestate/luxury-electric-kitchen-induction-trend.html) ![The architects behind New York City’s first all-electric skyscraper found that induction cooktops were ideal for their “clean” kitchen designs. ](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/03/multimedia/03-luxe-electric-kitchens-01-qtpk/03-luxe-electric-kitchens-01-qtpk-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Matthew Williams - [Opinion: Pay More Attention to A.I.](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/31/opinion/artificial-intelligence-new-world.html) ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/01/31/opinion/31douthat-image/31douthat-image-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Illustration by Sam Whitney/The New York Times; Source image by KenWiedemann/Getty Images - [Heavy Snowfall in Japan Kills Dozens](https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/asia/100000010686677/japan-snow-deaths.html) ![The Tottori Sand Dunes in Tottori, Japan, last month.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/03/multimedia/03xp-japan-hkbp/03xp-japan-hkbp-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Mizuki Sakai/Kyodo News, via Associated Press - [18 Off Broadway Shows (and Some Puppets) to Defrost Your February](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/01/theater/off-broadway-shows.html) ![Owen Teague and Abbey Lee in “Blackout Songs” at the Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space in Manhattan.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/01/arts/01cul-off-broadway-roundup-sub/01cul-off-broadway-roundup-sub-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Emilio Madrid - [Does This Angel Look Familiar? A Modern Face Appears in a Rome Fresco.](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/world/europe/angel-meloni-face-rome-church.html) ![A restored angel fresco with a figure resembling Giorgia Meloni in the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Lucina, in Rome.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/02/multimedia/02int-ITALY-MELONI-hfwm/02int-ITALY-MELONI-hfwm-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Image by Vincenzo Livieri/Reuters - [Gaza Crossing to Egypt Reopens in Step Forward for Fragile Cease-Fire](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/world/middleeast/gaza-rafah-border-crossing.html) ![A medical convoy carrying patients in Khan Younis, Gaza, heading for the Rafah crossing on Monday. The opening of the crossing is expected to expedite the exit of thousands of sick and wounded people waiting for treatment abroad.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/02/multimedia/02Rafah-opening-01-bphm/02Rafah-opening-01-bphm-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Saher Alghorra for The New York Times - [Is the Personal Political? Five Takeaways From Gavin Newsom’s New Book](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/01/us/politics/gavin-newsom-memoir-takeaways.html) ![Gavin Newsom has emerged as one of the Democratic Party’s most prominent foils to President Trump.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/01/30/multimedia/pol-newsom-takeaways-hqmb/pol-newsom-takeaways-hqmb-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/business/stock-market-melt-up-downturn.html#after-bottom) ## Site Index [Go to Home Page »](https://www.nytimes.com/) News - [Home Page](https://www.nytimes.com/) - [U.S.](https://www.nytimes.com/section/us) - [World](https://www.nytimes.com/section/world) - [Politics](https://www.nytimes.com/section/politics) - [New York](https://www.nytimes.com/section/nyregion) - [Education](https://www.nytimes.com/section/education) - [Sports](https://www.nytimes.com/section/sports) - [Business](https://www.nytimes.com/section/business) - [Tech](https://www.nytimes.com/section/technology) - [Science](https://www.nytimes.com/section/science) - [Weather](https://www.nytimes.com/section/weather) - [The Great Read](https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/the-great-read) - [Obituaries](https://www.nytimes.com/section/obituaries) - [Headway](https://www.nytimes.com/section/headway) - [Visual Investigations](https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/visual-investigations) - [The Magazine](https://www.nytimes.com/section/magazine) Arts - [Book Review](https://www.nytimes.com/section/books/review) - [Best Sellers Book List](https://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/) - [Dance](https://www.nytimes.com/section/arts/dance) - [Movies](https://www.nytimes.com/section/movies) - [Music](https://www.nytimes.com/section/arts/music) - [Pop Culture](https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/pop-culture) - [Television](https://www.nytimes.com/section/arts/television) - [Theater](https://www.nytimes.com/section/theater) - [Visual Arts](https://www.nytimes.com/section/arts/design) Lifestyle - [Health](https://www.nytimes.com/section/health) - [Well](https://www.nytimes.com/section/well) - [Food](https://www.nytimes.com/section/food) - [Restaurant Reviews](https://www.nytimes.com/reviews/dining) - [Love](https://www.nytimes.com/section/fashion/weddings) - [Travel](https://www.nytimes.com/section/travel) - [Style](https://www.nytimes.com/section/style) - [Fashion](https://www.nytimes.com/section/fashion) - [Real Estate](https://www.nytimes.com/section/realestate) - [T Magazine](https://www.nytimes.com/section/t-magazine) Opinion - [Today's Opinion](https://www.nytimes.com/section/opinion) - [Columnists](https://www.nytimes.com/section/opinion/columnists) - [Editorials](https://www.nytimes.com/section/opinion/editorials) - [Guest Essays](https://www.nytimes.com/section/opinion/contributors) - [Op-Docs](https://www.nytimes.com/column/op-docs) - [Letters](https://www.nytimes.com/section/opinion/letters) - [Sunday Opinion](https://www.nytimes.com/section/opinion/sunday) - [Opinion Video](https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/opinion-video) - [Opinion Audio](https://www.nytimes.com/series/opinion-audio) More - [Audio](https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/podcasts) - [Games](https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords) - [Cooking](https://cooking.nytimes.com/) - [Wirecutter](https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/) - [The Athletic](https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/) - [Jobs](https://www.nytimes.com/section/jobs) - [Video](https://www.nytimes.com/video) - [Graphics](https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/graphics) - [Trending](https://www.nytimes.com/trending/) - [Live Events](https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/nyt-events) - [Corrections](https://www.nytimes.com/section/corrections) - [Reader Center](https://www.nytimes.com/section/reader-center) - [TimesMachine](https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser) - [The Learning Network](https://www.nytimes.com/section/learning) - [School of The NYT](https://nytedu.com/) - [inEducation](https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/nytimesineducation) ### News - [Home Page](https://www.nytimes.com/) - [U.S.](https://www.nytimes.com/section/us) - [World](https://www.nytimes.com/section/world) - [Politics](https://www.nytimes.com/section/politics) - [New York](https://www.nytimes.com/section/nyregion) - [Education](https://www.nytimes.com/section/education) - [Sports](https://www.nytimes.com/section/sports) - [Business](https://www.nytimes.com/section/business) - [Tech](https://www.nytimes.com/section/technology) - [Science](https://www.nytimes.com/section/science) - [Weather](https://www.nytimes.com/section/weather) - [The Great Read](https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/the-great-read) - [Obituaries](https://www.nytimes.com/section/obituaries) - [Headway](https://www.nytimes.com/section/headway) - [Visual Investigations](https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/visual-investigations) - [The Magazine](https://www.nytimes.com/section/magazine) ### Arts - [Book Review](https://www.nytimes.com/section/books/review) - [Best Sellers Book List](https://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/) - [Dance](https://www.nytimes.com/section/arts/dance) - [Movies](https://www.nytimes.com/section/movies) - [Music](https://www.nytimes.com/section/arts/music) - [Pop Culture](https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/pop-culture) - [Television](https://www.nytimes.com/section/arts/television) - [Theater](https://www.nytimes.com/section/theater) - [Visual Arts](https://www.nytimes.com/section/arts/design) ### Lifestyle - [Health](https://www.nytimes.com/section/health) - [Well](https://www.nytimes.com/section/well) - [Food](https://www.nytimes.com/section/food) - [Restaurant Reviews](https://www.nytimes.com/reviews/dining) - [Love](https://www.nytimes.com/section/fashion/weddings) - [Travel](https://www.nytimes.com/section/travel) - [Style](https://www.nytimes.com/section/style) - [Fashion](https://www.nytimes.com/section/fashion) - [Real Estate](https://www.nytimes.com/section/realestate) - [T Magazine](https://www.nytimes.com/section/t-magazine) ### Opinion - [Today's Opinion](https://www.nytimes.com/section/opinion) - [Columnists](https://www.nytimes.com/section/opinion/columnists) - [Editorials](https://www.nytimes.com/section/opinion/editorials) - [Guest Essays](https://www.nytimes.com/section/opinion/contributors) - [Op-Docs](https://www.nytimes.com/column/op-docs) - [Letters](https://www.nytimes.com/section/opinion/letters) - [Sunday Opinion](https://www.nytimes.com/section/opinion/sunday) - [Opinion Video](https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/opinion-video) - [Opinion Audio](https://www.nytimes.com/series/opinion-audio) ### More - [Audio](https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/podcasts) - [Games](https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords) - [Cooking](https://cooking.nytimes.com/) - [Wirecutter](https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/) - [The Athletic](https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/) - [Jobs](https://www.nytimes.com/section/jobs) - [Video](https://www.nytimes.com/video) - [Graphics](https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/graphics) - [Trending](https://www.nytimes.com/trending/) - [Live Events](https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/nyt-events) - [Corrections](https://www.nytimes.com/section/corrections) - [Reader Center](https://www.nytimes.com/section/reader-center) - [TimesMachine](https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser) - [The Learning Network](https://www.nytimes.com/section/learning) - [School of The NYT](https://nytedu.com/) - [inEducation](https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/nytimesineducation) ### Account - [Subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription) - [Manage My Account](https://www.nytimes.com/account) - [Home Delivery](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription/home-delivery) - [Gift Subscriptions](https://www.nytimes.com/gift) - [Group Subscriptions](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription/groups?Pardot_Campaign_Code_Form_Input=89FQX) - [Gift Articles](https://www.nytimes.com/gift-articles) - [Email Newsletters](https://www.nytimes.com/newsletters) - [NYT Licensing](https://nytlicensing.com/) - [Replica Edition](https://nytimes.pressreader.com/) - [Times Store](https://store.nytimes.com/) ## Site Information Navigation - [© 2026 The New York Times Company](https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115014792127-Copyright-Notice) - [NYTCo](https://www.nytco.com/) - [Contact Us](https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115015385887-Contact-The-New-York-Times) - [Accessibility](https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115015727108-Accessibility) - [Work with us](https://www.nytco.com/careers/) - [Advertise](https://advertising.nytimes.com/) - [T Brand Studio](https://advertising.nytimes.com/custom-content/) - [Privacy Policy](https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/10940941449492-The-New-York-Times-Company-Privacy-Policy) - [Cookie Policy](https://www.nytimes.com/privacy/cookie-policy) - [Terms of Service](https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115014893428-Terms-of-Service) - [Terms of Sale](https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115014893968-Terms-of-Sale) - [Site Map](https://www.nytimes.com/sitemap/) - [Canada](https://www.nytimes.com/ca/) - [International](https://www.nytimes.com/international/) - [Help](https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us) - [Subscriptions](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=37WXW)
Readable Markdown	Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/business/stock-market-melt-up-downturn.html#after-top) Strategies Traders have repeatedly shrugged off President Trump’s disruptive tariff wars and fiscal policy, pushing U.S. stock prices back into expensive territory, our columnist says. ![An illustration of black tags with dollar signs hanging on white strings, with the bottoms of the tags melting into a puddle.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/07/13/business/13strategies-illo/13strategies-illo-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Credit...Giulio Bonasera Published July 11, 2025Updated July 12, 2025 Market meltdowns have been a big worry lately, and for good reason. With President Trump imposing the highest tariffs since the Great Depression and enacting myriad other disruptive policies, the threat of another market crash can’t be ignored. Yet despite an 18.9 percent downturn in the S\&P 500 earlier this year, the stock market has [rebounded](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/04/business/markets-investment-returns-trump.html). It has continually shrugged off shocks that, in previous years, may have set off a prolonged bear market. In fact, stocks have become expensive again. While the potential for a serious market downturn hasn’t vanished, I think it’s also time to begin thinking about another problem: the danger of a market melt-up. By many measures, we’re already in perilously overvalued territory. On a historical basis, share prices are high in relation to corporate earnings, assets and the size of the overall economy. I don’t want to go too far with this. The U.S. stock market isn’t nearly as expensive as it was at the height of the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s and early 2000. But it is increasingly pricey — surprisingly so, when you consider the repeated blows to market sentiment dealt by the Trump administration. Tariffs re-emerged as a major issue over the past week. The administration issued an array of announcements: Tariffs will increase, be delayed, not be delayed, be imposed on copper, be negotiated lower, be made permanent, and on and on. Who really knows? The stock market has been absorbing this information, stumbling from time to time but then regaining its footing. While the economic impact of the tariffs has barely been felt yet, the stock market remains much higher than it was at the beginning of the year. ## How High? One sign that the “market is a little out over its skis,” as Bespoke Investment Group put it in a note to clients this past week, is that shares of companies that are making no profit have been rising faster than those that are deeply profitable. Bespoke, an independent financial research firm, said, “For stocks that are losing money, generally speaking, the bigger the losses the better the returns.” Companies with marvelous narratives about future returns are capturing investors’ imaginations. For example, a leading stock in the Russell 3000 index, with a gain of more than 500 percent this year, was Aeva Technologies. It makes sensors for robots, autonomous vehicles and drones — all hot items these days. Yet the company is losing a ton of money. No matter. In the current market, the sky is the limit. Referring to the astonishing stock performance of money-losing companies, Bespoke said: “This is, to put it mildly, an unsustainable dynamic. Valuations can only do so much to support markets before the trend reverses. Of course, there are other sources of market return other than multiple expansion of no-earnings companies, but this dynamic is still emblematic of a market that is starting to get carried away with itself.” Moneymaking companies are receiving remarkably high valuations, too. Take Nvidia, which this past week became the first company to pierce the \$4 trillion threshold for stock market capitalization. Nvidia is highly profitable, and it designs many of the advanced chips that power artificial intelligence Nothing seems to be more prized than A.I. in the market right now. Nvidia stock is extremely expensive: Its price-to-earnings ratio is above 50:1, according to FactSet. That means that an investor must pay more than \$50 for every \$1 of the company’s earnings. Compared with the start of 2023, when its price was 250 times its earnings, the company may look like a bargain. Even so, its current valuation implies that its profits will grow at lightning speed for decades to come. The market may be comfortable with that assumption, but the law of gravity makes me [question](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/22/business/nvidia-price-to-sales-ratio.html) whether Nvidia’s price is sustainable. ## Booms and Busts Steep market valuations alone don’t cause price declines, but in the past, they have eventually led to trouble. [Alan Greenspan](https://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/07/business/a-buried-message-loudly-heard.html), the former Federal Reserve chairman, warned elliptically of excessively high stock prices in December 1996, when he famously asked, “How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions?” He didn’t provide a clear answer. In response to Mr. Greenspan’s words, the market foundered but then shot up further. It wasn’t until March 2000 that stock prices — by then wildly exorbitant by most measures — ultimately crashed. Irrational exuberance has become standard Wall Street jargon. Robert Shiller, the Yale economist and Nobel laureate, [used](https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691173122/irrational-exuberance?srsltid=AfmBOoop4cdds5pTYCjZoeZwEBPTSblz78gRz9daZZG9upWXPw5FaRCK) the phrase as the title for an important book. Melt-up isn’t as widely used, but it may be on the verge of becoming so. “The melt-up in risk assets continues,” HSBC, the global bank based in London, warned recently. It saw two distinct possibilities: an intensifying melt-up reflecting investor exuberance or a meltdown in the face of what could turn out to be endlessly troubling developments, many of them meted out by the Trump administration. “The bearish narrative can point to tariff rates,” the bank wrote. But, HSBC also said, Wall Street analysts have lowered expectations for corporate earnings to a level that most companies are likely to exceed. Therefore, it concluded, “We have the perfect recipe for the broad-based melt-up in risk assets to continue.” Melt-ups have long been part of the vocabulary of Edward Yardeni, the independent Wall Street economist and strategist. At the moment, he said, the market is “sort of, kind of, in a melt-up.” Referring to the sharp stock downturn earlier this year, he added, “Just look at the way this correction has been reversed, it’s been a melt-up.” Stock valuations are “pretty rich,” he said, and people in the markets are “back to believing” that artificial intelligence is “a miracle technology.” In an email, he estimated a range of “subjective probabilities” for the stock market. There is a 60 percent chance that the bull market will continue, he said, a 25 percent chance of a bear market caused by a recession, and a third possibility: a 15 percent chance of a melt-up. In a melt-up, stocks would spiral much higher, generating big gains on an unstable base. The gains would be wonderful. But any provocation or disruption could set off a severe downturn. ## Don’t Get Too Excited “Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” That’s an adage often attributed to the British economist John Maynard Keynes, though I’ve never found proof that he said it. Nevertheless, it’s apt. I worry about market melt-ups but rarely feel confident enough about my observations to do anything about it in my investing life. Only occasionally, in my view, is it completely obvious that the market is so high that it must fall, or so low that it must rise. (Such moments are usually accompanied by a major shift in policy by the Federal Reserve — lowering interest rates sharply at the bottom of a bear market, or raising them when the economy is so red hot that it is on the verge of burning.) This isn’t one of those times. In the second Trump administration, anything is possible for the stock market. It could rise, fall or, more likely, be extremely volatile and vacillate between extremes. As a long-term investor using mainly diversified global index funds, I try to ride out the market’s madness, using bonds and cash (much of it in money-market funds) to buffer me from severe stock downturns. I’ve bulked up that buffer this year. While I take a long-term view, I would prefer a calmer ride. Who needs the agony of a stock market decline, even if you don’t intend to touch the money for decades? More important, many people — including those in retirement or planning to start it soon — can’t handle major downturns. And market crashes are often associated with recessions. Melt-ups are much more pleasant than downturns but they cause major problems, too, because they are often followed by crashes. It would be far better if markets were calm and orderly. So I’m hoping we have neither a melt-up nor a meltdown now. A traditionally bumpy market, with setbacks but an upward arc, is in nearly everyone’s interest. So don’t get too excited if markets start to fly toward the sky. A version of this article appears in print on July 13, 2025, Section BU, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: The Increasing Danger of a Market Melt-Up. [Order Reprints](https://nytimes.wrightsmedia.com/) \\| [Today’s Paper](https://www.nytimes.com/section/todayspaper) \\| [Subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscriptions/Multiproduct/lp8HYKU.html?campaignId=48JQY) ## Related Content [Strategies](https://www.nytimes.com/column/business-strategies) Jeff Sommer’s column on markets, finance and the economy. - ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/01/business/30strategies-illo/30strategies-illo-thumbLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Davide Bonazzi - ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/01/25/business/25strategies-illo/25strategies-illo-thumbLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Dan Page - Norlys Perez/Reuters [More in Business](https://www.nytimes.com/section/business) - ![It’s unclear how much any of the beneficiaries to Jeffrey Epstein’s estate will receive. Its value has dropped significantly since his death, owing to payment of taxes, legal fees and settlements to victims of his sexual abuse.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/03/multimedia/00biz-Epstein-estate-pvfm/00biz-Epstein-estate-pvfm-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) via House Oversight Democrats - ![Ms. Oliver in 2021, when she was 101. “She represented that no-nonsense Mainer who just got up every day and did what they had to do,” said Barbara Walsh, the author of a children’s book about Mrs. Oliver.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/03/multimedia/03Oliver--01-ljvh/03Oliver--01-ljvh-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press - ![Guardian Sports, the company that makes Guardian Caps, says more than half a million athletes at all levels now wear the helmet enhancements.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/01/29/multimedia/00BIZ-GUARDIAN-CAPS-1-gqcw/00BIZ-GUARDIAN-CAPS-1-gqcw-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Audra Melton for The New York Times - ![The first lady, Melania Trump, at a screening of “Melania” at the Kennedy Center in Washington on Thursday.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/01/31/multimedia/31biz-boxoffice-melania-qkhm/31biz-boxoffice-melania-qkhm-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Doug Mills/The New York Times Editors’ Picks - ![Locked in: On the bus to the competition in Sandy, Utah, the Charelles listened to the music for their routines on repeat.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/08/multimedia/08cul-drill-down-promo/08cul-drill-down-promo-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Cassidy Araiza for The New York Times - ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/01/fashion/01ST-MODERN-WANG/01ST-MODERN-WANG-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Brian Rea Trending in The Times - ![Chappell Roan arrived in a burgundy, opaque chiffon cape, a custom design by Mugler. Below her cape, an opaque floor-length skirt hung in place from nipple piercings.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/01/multimedia/ST-NAKED-GRAMMYS-kczb/ST-NAKED-GRAMMYS-kczb-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Neilson Barnard/Getty Images - ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/03/opinion/03lozada-image/03lozada-image-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Illustration by Sam Whitney/The New York Times - ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/01/29/well/02WELL-LOW-CARB-image/02WELL-LOW-CARB-image-square640-v2.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Hayley Watson - ![The architects behind New York City’s first all-electric skyscraper found that induction cooktops were ideal for their “clean” kitchen designs. ](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/03/multimedia/03-luxe-electric-kitchens-01-qtpk/03-luxe-electric-kitchens-01-qtpk-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Matthew Williams - ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/01/31/opinion/31douthat-image/31douthat-image-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Illustration by Sam Whitney/The New York Times; Source image by KenWiedemann/Getty Images - ![The Tottori Sand Dunes in Tottori, Japan, last month.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/03/multimedia/03xp-japan-hkbp/03xp-japan-hkbp-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Mizuki Sakai/Kyodo News, via Associated Press - ![Owen Teague and Abbey Lee in “Blackout Songs” at the Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space in Manhattan.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/01/arts/01cul-off-broadway-roundup-sub/01cul-off-broadway-roundup-sub-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Emilio Madrid - ![A restored angel fresco with a figure resembling Giorgia Meloni in the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Lucina, in Rome.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/02/multimedia/02int-ITALY-MELONI-hfwm/02int-ITALY-MELONI-hfwm-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Image by Vincenzo Livieri/Reuters - ![A medical convoy carrying patients in Khan Younis, Gaza, heading for the Rafah crossing on Monday. The opening of the crossing is expected to expedite the exit of thousands of sick and wounded people waiting for treatment abroad.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/02/multimedia/02Rafah-opening-01-bphm/02Rafah-opening-01-bphm-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Saher Alghorra for The New York Times - ![Gavin Newsom has emerged as one of the Democratic Party’s most prominent foils to President Trump.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/01/30/multimedia/pol-newsom-takeaways-hqmb/pol-newsom-takeaways-hqmb-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350) Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/business/stock-market-melt-up-downturn.html#after-bottom)
Shard	84 (laksa)
Root Hash	4566504020376537684
Unparsed URL	com,nytimes!www,/2025/07/11/business/stock-market-melt-up-downturn.html s443