S&P 500 Hits New Highs Despite 10-Year Depression Warning

The collapse thesis: 10 years of depression that never arrives

The S&P 500 is set to crash, opening a decade of misery. This claim has been repeated since 2023 with an annual chart in hand, accumulating urgency but zero accuracy. The core argument is not a hunch: in the MACD of the index on an annual chart—the green mountain measuring price momentum, which gains reliability with longer timeframes—price marks highs while market entry volume drops. This divergence, the analysis contends, is a time bomb. The fuse has been lit for over two years.

S&P 500 annual chart: upward momentum and declining volume

The indicator draws an ascending mountain while new money enters sparingly. Read literally, this means prices rise without support and a correction is a matter of time. The 2022 crisis prediction, remember, came a year early using the monthly graph. With this track record, the forecast hardens: either a ten-year interval similar to that separating the dot-com bubble from the subprime crisis, or a 1929-style crash with deep recession and geopolitical fallout. The preferred window for disaster is always October, though misery arrives gradually.

The diagnosis extends beyond one index. US cities emptying southward, Europe struggling to recover, China paying for prolonged elbichito measures, and Latin America where socialism has taken root across most of the continent. Candidates to dodge the blow would be Japan, Australia, and India.

Five chart updates between 2023 and 2025

Tracking the forecast works like a countdown with extensions. In August 2023, a very difficult autumn for equities was announced, with Michael Burry and Warren Buffett supposedly prepared for the great crash and explicit advice: do not be 100% invested. In January 2024 came the maximalist twist, with an alleged investment fund valued at $10 billion cited as the trigger for the greatest depression in history and an open conflict between East and West.

In July 2024, the excuse was technological: AI and semiconductors kept the hot potato rising, and Trump’s election could extend the cycle to 2026. In January 2025, the message was that we entered discount time, with a year of margin at most before the collapse, debt crisis, and cuts to contributory pensions. In April 2025, the implicit acknowledgment that the rebound continues: those who bought during the bubble wonder if it rises again, gold no longer seems safe above $3,000, and the bet shifts to Bitcoin. The graph summary: paint it black.

Why is the stock market rising if the economy doesn’t support it?

Because, according to this reading, markets stopped reflecting the real economy long ago. The argument is not baseless: debt is unsustainable, foreclosures are rising, food prices have skyrocketed, and US workers are living in cars because they cannot afford a house or rent. That the index rises in this context is explained, they say, only by injecting debt into the system relentlessly. One circulating theory, attributed to analyst Alberto Iturralde, claims markets are kept pumped so Democrats win US elections.

The counter-argument replies that debt is infinite because one can always print more, and wars, like the Gulf War, clear liabilities via inflation. Added to this is the most uncomfortable argument for any doomsayer: since 2020 the stock market has only gone up, with all the misery around. Those invested protected themselves from inflation; those waiting for the crash lost purchasing power. The warning of a prolonged scenario is not new, nor gratuitous: market timing, they recall, is a bad advisor, and one should keep dry firewood to burn when it falls rather than run away.

How long does a depression last, ten or thirty years?

It depends on who you ask, and the range is wide. Some consider ten years naive and raise the penalty to between 20 and 30 years, warning that the primary and secondary sectors must be rebuilt to escape the hole. Others argue that the depression is already here and has been underway for two decades, and that only those born before 1970 have not noticed. The background is the same: each crisis leaves less middle class and weaker purchasing power than the last.

The most pessimistic add the oil peak as a structural floor and speak of an eighty-year decline. Conversely, the thesis of a provoked, laboratory-style crisis: without systemic bankruptcies or major corporate collapses, the episode could close as soon as the gulf is unblocked. The calculation of the full cost of energy, with the list of chained consequences, is left for anyone to review in full.

Where to take refuge: Bitcoin, gold, or oil?

Neither gold nor equities come out well. The precious metal is no longer considered safe above $3,000, and the recommendation on Bitcoin is mechanical: buy when the MACD enters red zone on a weekly chart and never sell, except in general market euphoria. Watch the macro detail: if crude supply tightens, oil could go above $150, with companies halting activity, empty highways, power cuts, and shantytowns. And bricks are no exception: better periphery than city center, because centers will become ugly and unpaid community fees will become the norm.

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The thesis has been updated for three years and wrong for three years on the calendar. The divergence between momentum and volume will remain, the black swan will keep having no confirmed date, and the October window will reopen every year. If the collapse comes in 2026, 2027, or 2035, no one knows; what can be affirmed is that those who chose to stay out of the market since 2023 have paid for it. And that those now putting money into funds without knowing what they buy are, precisely, the signal this thesis always points to.