So, the Markets Had a 'Strong Week': Here's the Convenient Narrative They're Selling You

So, Wall Street had a great Friday. The Nasdaq and S&P 500 are up, everyone’s patting each other on the back, and the Dow just notched its sixth positive month in a row. You’re supposed to feel good about this. You’re supposed to see this as a sign of a robust, healthy economy firing on all cylinders.

Don't.

What we saw today wasn't a market rally. It was a one-company parade. The entire financial world is basically riding on the coattails of Amazon because its cloud division, AWS, managed to beat expectations. Amazon’s stock pops nearly 10%, and suddenly the whole system is "strong." Give me a break. This isn't a sign of strength; it's a sign of terrifying fragility.

The market is supposed to be a reflection of the entire economy, a diverse ecosystem of thousands of companies. Instead, it’s become a Jenga tower where every other block is painted with the logo of one of five tech companies. Sure, the tower is getting taller, but we’re all just holding our breath, waiting for someone to pull the wrong piece and send the whole damn thing crashing down. And we're all pretending that ain't the case.

The Gospel According to St. Jassy

Let’s dig into the numbers that have everyone so giddy. Amazon’s cloud revenue jumped 20%. Impressive, I guess, if you ignore the fact that they’re basically just one of a few digital landlords for the entire internet. CEO Andy Jassy says AWS is "growing at a pace we haven't seen since 2022" and that AI demand is "strong."

Offcourse it is. Every company on Earth is now legally obligated to mention "AI" in their earnings calls at least a dozen times or their stock gets sent to the glue factory. It’s the magic word that makes investors open their wallets. It doesn't matter if the "AI" is just a glorified Excel spreadsheet with a chatbot interface. Say the word, get the cash.

Then you have the analyst class, the professional cheerleaders paid to tell us everything is fine. Brian Mulberry from Zacks Investment Management told CNBC that "AI adoption is picking up," which justifies the more than $600 billion in CAPEX spending planned for next year. Six. Hundred. Billion. Dollars.

Let that number sink in. That’s more than the entire GDP of countries like Sweden or Argentina. And it’s all being bet on this vague, undefined promise of "AI sales." Are we really supposed to believe that throwing a mountain of cash that large at servers and code will automatically translate into sustainable profit? What happens when the first few major AI projects inevitably belly-flop and that $600 billion turns into the biggest corporate write-down in human history? Nobody asks that question, because right now, the party’s still going.

This isn't investing. It's a faith-based initiative. And I, for one, am not a believer. The market is acting like a desperate gambler, putting all its chips on a single number and praying it hits. It's a bad strategy. No, 'bad' doesn't cover it—this is a catastrophically stupid strategy built on nothing but pure, unadulterated hype.

Riding the Coattails of Hype

Because Amazon sprinkled the AI fairy dust, every other company with "AI" in its pitch deck got a little boost. Palantir was up. Oracle was up. It’s a classic case of a rising tide lifting all the boats that happen to have the right buzzword painted on the hull. There’s no deep analysis here, just algorithmic trading and herd mentality. Amazon did good, so let’s buy everything that sounds like Amazon!

And it's not just the AI grift. Look at the other "winners." Netflix jumped because it announced a 10-for-1 stock split. This is, without a doubt, one of the dumbest reasons for a stock to go up. A stock split is purely cosmetic. It's like cutting a pizza into sixteen slices instead of eight and pretending you have more pizza. The value of the company doesn't change one single cent, but because it makes the shares look cheaper, people who don't know any better pile in. It’s financial engineering at its most cynical.

Then there's Tesla, a company that runs more on its CEO's Twitter feed than on its actual car sales figures. The stock was up over 3%. Why? Who the hell knows. Maybe Elon Musk posted a meme. It’s completely detached from any underlying business reality.

So when you zoom out, what did we really see this week? We saw a market so starved for good news, so desperate for a hero, that it latched onto a single earnings report from a single tech behemoth and declared victory. They're celebrating October being a good month, conveniently forgetting that October is historically the month where markets go to die. They're celebrating the Dow’s winning streak, like that means anything for the average person whose grocery bill just went up another 10%...

Then again, maybe I'm the crazy one. Maybe throwing hundreds of billions at an unproven technology and celebrating cosmetic stock splits is the new foundation of a healthy economy. Maybe this time it really is different.

Yeah, and maybe I’ll win the lottery tomorrow.

This Whole Thing is Built on Sand

Let’s be brutally honest for a second. The cheering you hear from Wall Street isn't for a strong economy; it's the sound of relief. Relief that one of the handful of companies holding up the entire tent didn't collapse this quarter. This isn't a victory lap. It's a collective sigh that the inevitable crash has been postponed for another 90 days. We're not building a solid foundation for future growth. We're just adding another floor to a skyscraper built on a sinkhole, hoping it doesn't all go down on our watch.