: What is keeping the stock market high? With unemployment spikes, housing going forbearance, personal debt increasing at record rate, corporate debt at historic height. The simple question is despite all the bad news out there

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The market will continue to go up as long as there are more buyers than sellers, due to the laws of supply and demand.

The market is not the economy. A lot of the bad news are already priced in and the demand reflects the hopes and expectations for the quarters/years to come. The assumptions might be overly optimistic but only time will tell.

Additionally, there has been a lot of fiscal/monetary stimulus to support the economy and market valuations.

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Fear is a very powerful emotion and the news media uses it to help their advertisers sell products. After all that is who the news media works for.
One is mistaken if they believe the media's job is to provide accurate information.
Fear is highly effective when it comes to selling.

While there is certainly some bad news there is also good news. For example COVID-19 deaths are an order of magnitude lower then originally reported. While racial tensions are high after a couple of incidents justice is progress in the two case I am thinking about. That is good news.

While there have been a lot of layoffs, most of those are lower paying jobs that have a less dramatic effect on the economy. Will they be hired back quickly? Probably. Many higher paying jobs are working from home either part or full time so people have more disposable income and time to spend.

It all depends upon one's perspective. Two people can view a story and both can walk away with very different emotions. One must be very careful at taking the media at face value and look for the story within the story.

This is my opinion but I think we are in for another correction shortly. When the bad economic data comes out for certain companies next earning season, the will be panic selling. That will be a great time to buy and stock values will likely recover quickly. However, I could be very wrong.

The best approach to investing is to ignore the media, invest part of your income regularly, and let it grow. Efforts to time and trade are futile. Regular investments in low cost index funds and time will make you wealthy.