Why traders are cheering when they should be fearing

Tokyo

THE last time Robert Shiller heard stock-market investors talk like this in 2000, it didn't end well for the bulls. Back then, the Nobel Prize-winning economist says, traders were captivated by a "new era story" of technological transformation: the Internet had redefined American business and made traditional gauges of equity-market value obsolete.

Today, the game changer everyone's buzzing about is political: Donald Trump and his bold plans to slash regulations, cut taxes and turbocharge economic growth with a trillion-dollar infrastructure boom.