Real threats to US equity bull market are human

THE current move higher for US stocks may look like a bull market, but it shares few characteristics with an actual bull. The real risks are entirely human and centre on how investors factor long-term uncertainty into asset prices.

One example is the "ageing bull" objection: Stocks have run for too long and the bull is too old to be productive. Most market observers use April 9, 2009, as the starting point for these measurements.

By that reckoning, US stocks have risen 250 per cent over seven-plus years. This is an extraordinarily long-lived rally, surpassed only by the record move in the 1990s and the surge during president Franklin Roosevelt's first terms in office.