Factsheet
Is the entire stock market basically a giant confidence game and what happens the day people stop believing in it?
r/nasdaq
Does it make sense to invest in a NASDAQ index fund in addition to/instead of S&P500?
Does NASDAQ-100 's superior return provef Boglehead wrong?
Honestly I’ve been thinking about this way too much lately… sometimes the whole stock market feels like it only works because everyone keeps pretending it works. Like literally the whole thing runs on “confidence,” “sentiment,” “vibes,” whatever you wanna call it. Earnings matter yeah, interest rates matter yeah, but at the end of the day people buy because they believe it’s worth buying. People hold because they trust it’ll go back up. People panic because they think someone else is panicking.
It’s like one giant circular trust fall. Everyone is basically agreeing not to look down.
And then I keep wondering… what if one day people just collectively stop believing the whole thing makes sense? Like not a normal recession or correction, but a day where enough people say “nah I’m done trusting this casino.” Would everything just… unwind? Would indexes tank for years? Would governments step in and force something? Or does the system somehow survive because it’s too big to fail, like people will keep believing simply because they have no choice?
Idk maybe I’m overthinking it but genuinely curious how fragile the system actually is. Is it all just confidence keeping the whole thing floating?