The theme is worth a separate post, but let me highlight the most obvious responses: Those who choose to buy stocks are not ignorant of the list of worries or the crash warnings. Barron's shows that core inflation is better described as the trend, including this chart: (click to enlarge) The Philly Fed index was incredibly strong - a reading of 40.8 versus 20.7 in the prior month. By Jeff Miller : The upcoming calendar has plenty of data in a holiday-shortened week.