最新报道：This is an excerpt from The Breakdown newsletter. To read the full version, please subscribe. The legendary Peter Lynch advises investors to stop paying attention to the news. “The man who never bothers to think about the state of the economy, who blissfully ignores market conditions and invests regularly as planned, is better off than the man who studies and tries to time his investments, getting in when he feels confident about the stock market and getting out when he feels uncomfortable.” This year, the news has been unusually nauseating: trade wars, real wars, fears of a recession, AI doomsday theories. Yet we are back to all-time highs for the Nasdaq and the S&P 500. There is nothing particularly new about this. “If you had paid close attention to the negative tone of most of our ‘Where is the Economy Going’ conferences over the past six years, you would have been scared out of stocks during the strongest market advance in modern history, while investors who remained blissfully ignorant of the end of the world happily tripled or quadrupled their money,” Lynch wrote in 1993’s One Up on Wall Street. The market has made even greater progress since then, and I think the only way to fully capture that progress is to remain blissfully ignorant of the world. It’s easy to look at the long-term performance of stocks and think that everyone should be fully invested all the time. It’s much harder to look at the daily news and think that now is the time to invest. Lynch advises you not to try. “The best way to not be scared off by the stock market is to buy stocks on a regular monthly basis.” American investors have taken this advice to a large extent, in a way that Lynch probably couldn’t have imagined. Now, an estimated 70 million American workers invest in 401k plans, rhythmically pouring pre-tax dollars into the stock market regardless of the news. This makes stocks less volatile than they would otherwise be. Or it should, probably. It should also make them more valuable, as investors will accept lower returns (i.e., higher valuations) in exchange for assets that give them less to worry about. So it makes sense that stocks are more expensive now than they were in the past. And they’re likely to get even more expensive. As long as we have jobs — and therefore 401k plans — it’s probably hard for the market to fall much. That will make stocks less and less scary — and more and more valuable. Let’s look at the charts. Still saving: The U.S. personal savings rate fell slightly to 4.5% in June. That’s historically low, but still 4.5% of a large and growing number. Some of those savings will go toward buying stocks every month, regardless of the news. Sentiment still needs to catch up: Stocks are back to all-time highs, but investor sentiment as measured by the AAII remains on the bearish side of neutral. Moving on the risk curve: U.S. investors are embracing risk, perhaps because stocks seem less risky after all the seemingly bad news this year. If stocks are less risky overall, then buying riskier stocks makes sense. The rest of the world is buying value: According to Goldman Sachs, there is an unprecedented disparity between the outperformance of U.S. growth stocks (dark blue line) and the outperformance of value stocks in the rest of the world (light blue line). While the rest of the world was seeking safety, U.S. investors were all in on growth. Is everything safe now? Ed Yardeni points out that profit margins in the semiconductor industry continue to rise. Historically, semiconductors have been the most cyclical, and therefore riskiest, area of investment. Now, they seem almost defensive. Good news or bad news for humanity? Less than 10% of companies reported using AI in the past two weeks, according to a U.S. Census Bureau survey. That could mean AI is only just beginning to disrupt the job market. Or it could mean humans are more useful to employers than the AI hype would have you believe. The immediate reason for the all-time highs? Expectations of an upcoming rate cut are giving investors a reason to buy now. One less reason to worry: The Cleveland Fed InflationNow model shows annual price growth, as measured by the U.S. CPI, at just 1.6% in the second quarter. Long-term stocks: Bank of America strategists say the U.S. stock market is on the verge of its seventh “major breakout” since 1990. A Bloomberg article noting the stock market’s new highs this week lists all the things that should worry the market right now — tariffs, the economy, consumer spending, even professional advice to be cautious — and then concludes, “Investors seem to be ignoring all of it.” Peter Lynch would agree. Have a great weekend, fellow Breakdown readers. Get news in your inbox. Explore the Blockworks newsletter: The Breakdown: Decoding Cryptocurrencies and Markets. Daily. Empire: Crypto news and analysis to start your day. Forward Guidance: The intersection of crypto, macroeconomics, and policy. 0xResearch: Alpha delivered straight to your inbox. Lightspeed: All about Solana. The Drop: Apps, games, memes, and more. Supply Shock: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.