Everything Is Crazy and the Markets Aren’t Freaking Out

At Credit Suisse Group AG’s prime brokerage desk in midtown Manhattan, the phone hardly seems to ring anymore. Its hedge fund clients don’t call about Donald Trump’s tweetstorms and the stock market or ask what to do when terrorists attack. And there was barely a whiff of panic when North Korea erupted in August. “Two rockets flew over the land mass of Japan and nothing happened,” says Mark Connors, Credit Suisse’s global head of risk advisory. “There were no calls. That’s absolutely crazy.”

Crazy maybe, but it’s become the norm on Wall Street. Whether it’s the threat of nuclear war, hurricanes, or Russian meddling, it seems nothing can unnerve investors bent on pushing the U.S. stock market higher and higher. Even Richard Thaler, who won a Nobel Prize last week for explaining how irrationality drives financial markets, said on Bloomberg Television he couldn’t understand why stocks keep going up now.