Bull Market or Bear Market: The Consensus Nobody Timed

Everyone is betting on the upside, but nobody knows when the correction will come

The market is bullish. Or at least, that is what most readings circulating these days suggest, and the arguments are not mystical: increasing highs, increasing lows, and liquidity that, according to one reading, no longer functions as it did during the pandemic. The problem is not the direction; it is the timing. Those who speak of a bubble are certainly not absent.

Increasing highs and increasing lows: what defines a bull market

The dominant thesis is simple and old. If every price high surpasses the previous one and every low does likewise, the trend is bullish, and there is little more to discuss. Most adhere to this, adding a closing argument: in the long term, the stock market always goes up. Some even maintain that if it is not bullish, then it must be total war or brutal deflation with monetary appreciation. The latter is considered impossible; the former, for now, too.

What could derail the trend? Interest rates and a pending correction

This is where the cracks begin to show. The belief is that two years of rate hikes are coming, and the market will fall during that period, with few exceptions: pharmaceuticals and medicine. The key, they argue, is not confusing rising rates with high rates, because to discuss high rates, they should exceed inflation that, according to the most aggressive reading circulating, stands at 23% annually. Based on this premise, thicker scenarios are drawn: a global conflict toward 2028, chain devaluations, and a monetary reset toward 2030. These are predictions, not data.

The doubt about money that no longer moves like during Elbichito

Against all this noise, some raise a more grounded objection: the monetary mass created during the pandemic no longer pushes like it used to, which would leave the market in a neutral or undecided zone. This is the fundamental discrepancy between those who see sustained growth and those who detect exhaustion. In between lies stagnant money: for those who wish to avoid shocks, ultra-short monetary funds are mentioned, with the warning that other products carry notable commissions.

Pharmaceuticals and artificial intelligence: the refuge that isn't so much

The pharmaceutical sector appears as one of the exceptions that would be saved from the predicted fall and, simultaneously, as a relative refuge, depending on who views it. The caveat: one bad piece of news about a specific drug is enough for a company to temporarily sink, no matter how solid the sector. The emergence of artificial intelligence is seen as a possible catalyst for margins in the medium term, although, as one participant points out, that is yet to be seen.

The trend, today, reads as bullish. Some expect a sharp correction soon, after which the market will continue to rise. But the conviction rests on the long term precisely because the short term offers no guarantee. If the correction that some expect arrives, we will know it when it has passed.