The Theater of Peak Valuation Has New Actors, Same Script

So here we are on Friday and the market's doing the thing again.

Fewer jobs added than expected? Pump it. Unemployment improves when hiring falls? This is somehow bullish. Valuation metrics hitting levels not seen since the dot-com implosion? Yawn, S&P to 7,200.

The S&P's forward P/E is 22. The Shiller CAPE ratio is 39. That's the same altitude from which we watched the Nasdaq crater 78% between 2000 and 2002. Not a metaphor. Not adjusted. Actual. The market threw a party on this news Friday because what else are you supposed to do when the game has gotten too expensive to exit?

Vistra jumped 10.5%. Oklo shot up 7.9%. Why? Because Meta signed deals for nuclear power—three 20-year commitments to juice their AI data centers. This is the moment we're living in. The economy is cooling, job growth is anemic, and we're celebrating because it means one megacap can now guarantee itself cheaper electricity for two decades. Not for productivity gains. Not because demand warrants it. Because the company has enough scale to lock in energy contracts the way utilities used to, but sexier.

This is what peak-late-stage-everything looks like. It's not the blow-off top you're waiting for. It's worse. It's the comfortable plateau where everyone knows the valuations are insane and nobody cares because the alternative—admitting you got in at 6,500 and the party's over—is unacceptable.

BlackRock's got almost $100 billion in their Bitcoin ETFs now. That's not retail FOMO anymore. That's institutional capital saying "we don't know if this works but we can't afford not to hold it." They're not even pretending anymore. Jay Jacobs, their ETF honcho, basically said "it's still early" about an asset that's been publicly trading for two years. Two years. In what universe is a $90,000 Bitcoin (down 28% from peak) and institutions with $100 billion committed still "early"? In the universe where you can't admit the thesis broke. Where the Trump trade—which was the entire story—already happened and wore itself out before he even took office.

Bitcoin's at $90,632. XRP somehow flipped BNB and is the fourth-largest crypto by market cap because Ripple's case against the SEC resolved and institutions threw $1 billion into the new spot ETFs. Grayscale, Bitwise—the usual suspects—all launching XRP funds because there's apparently zero friction in turning any resolving dispute into liquidity.

Gold's up 65% YTD. Silver's up 160%. China banned silver exports on January 1st and the market barely flinched. But sure, the dollar's strong because the Fed won't cut yet. That's the story. Not that we're watching the Reserve currency slowly decay under policy uncertainty and trade chaos. Just Fed rates staying put.

Meanwhile, General Motors took a $6 billion charge against its EV ambitions. AMD's down 0.74%. Apple broke a seven-day losing streak by barely moving. The fundamental economic move this week was employers staying cautious—fewer December hires than expected, but unemployment down because people gave up looking. That's not a recovery. That's margin compression wearing a suit.

And through it all, the market rallies. Dow added 237 points. Nasdaq surged 0.8%. New all-time highs. Again. Because certainty—even if it's certainty about a slow-growth, maybe-we-avoid-recession scenario—is worth paying for in fiat terms. The S&P's forward P/E is the highest outside the last two bubbles. The Shiller CAPE is literally at 2000-levels. And we're told to relax because Wall Street expects 10% gains in 2026 and "corporate earnings will grow double-digits in every quarter."

Every quarter.

Let me be direct: they're pricing in a fairy tale. A world where tariffs either don't materialize or don't hurt earnings. Where the Supreme Court case on presidential power somehow resolves without chaos. Where AI spending continues to infinity because it has to justify these valuations. Where the consumer keeps spending even as housing costs stay insane and sentiment is at historic lows. Where banks keep lending even as energy costs spike and CapEx gets hiked.

This isn't caution. This is denial with a strong bid.

The crypto market's already telling you what's coming. Standard Chartered cut their Bitcoin forecast from $300,000 to $150,000. Digital asset treasuries (the DATs that were supposed to be permanent buyers) have stopped accumulating because the math no longer works. Everyone's waiting for the same thing: for someone else to validate that prices should be here. For institutions to keep buying because they're locked in anyway. For the cycle to continue not because it makes sense but because the alternative—buying when valuations are reasonable—might never come.

Bernstein says Bitcoin bottomed. Fundstrat says $105-106k is reachable. The Street, as always, is telling you what you want to hear while quietly positioning for the scenario where none of it works.

The jobs report that was supposed to terrify us instead gave everyone permission to believe. Friday's close happened in a world where the economy is softly rolling over and that somehow justified new highs. When the Fed can't cut because the data isn't weak enough, and the market celebrates because that data point keeps asset prices at unsustainable levels—you're watching a closed loop. A system that no longer responds to reality, only to the story about reality.

The script is old. The actors changed. The ending's the same.

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Watch the Supreme Court case on tariffs. Nothing else matters until that rules. The entire market is short volatility and long hope. One decision changes everything.