Did the stock market markets whistle in front of the cemetery? StiFel closely examines the great “ American ‘monetary’ ‘

Stifel’s strategists, led by Barry Bannister and Thomas Carroll, wrote in a research note that they are simply “uncomfortable”, the S&P 500 winning 32% reduction on its intraday on April 7, because the latest GDP figures show that the real economy is almost exploring an exploration. They also warn that “hopium” is a powerful medication and that stock markets can “whistle in front of the cemetery”.

In simple terms, Bannister and Carroll say that consumers are not as rich as account sales show it, following “the monetary illusion” of the budgetary stimulus of the era of the cocoan which they described as a “world war” effort.

With the powerful American consumer who lacks shortness of breath in the middle of an economic slowdown in the second half of 2025, Stifel sees a drop of 10% or more in the S&P 500.

Real economic pain is being prepared

According to Stifel, the apparent health of the US consumer denies an underlying slowdown, with personal consumption – responsible for 68% of GDP, which has been growing 0% since the start of the year. Their research highlights several red flags.

They note that the growth of real wage income, the main engine of personal consumption, has slowed down at an annual rate of only 1% as stagflation strikes.

In addition, monetary and budgetary policies are in a “rope shot” that thwart each other, causing a minimum boost to consumer spending.

And unlike 2022 to 23, there is much less savings to consumers to support consumption.

Regarding this illusion of money: Stifel’s data show that from September 2019 to March 2022, household cash sales increased by 44%, while consumption expenditure has doubled against the historic median. Banister and Carroll argue that the illusion continued to pass out and helped to increase the prices of assets, but it is now fading after the “helicopter dump” in the early 2020s.

The Tell here, they say, is that savings rates have become balanced again with a net value of equity, after a period when the excess of money first evolved by consumption, then assets. In other words, America is essentially poor in cash.

In addition, the calculation of Stifel shows that the personal savings rate has dropped dramatically since the Americans began to spend and now have less money than in the years preceding the pandemic.

Analysts warn that this show that the artificial boost has decreased and that there is no apparent new source of household expenditure power, in the midst of persistent budgetary deficits and prices.

The search for Bank of America also cited the prices because it maintained its call for stagflation instead of the recession.

Correction to come?

The federal reserve has been left in a “too late” posture of stagflation, because the rate reductions that Trump continues to call cannot save a “overvalued” S&P 500, inflation proving sticky and limited offer in the economy.

While the Boom Capex around AI temporarily supports the prices of GDP and assets, Stifel provides that this bump will fade as corporate technological spending sets. Such a construction, after all, occurs only once, while the power of consumption expenditure enters a lull which could expose the markets to a brutal correction, they write.

The evaluations increased – Stifel notes that the S&P 500 reached 6,375 and the Nasdaq 100 reached 23,587 earlier this month. However, history shows that the momentum can turn on a penny; “The evaluation does not matter until it does,” warn analysts, citing the Grand Depression of 1929, the Dotcom Boom of 1999 and the post-comfortable atmosphere of 2021. They provide a sale of more than 10% for the S&P 500.

An explanation of a “weird” feeling?

The downward prediction of Stifel, echoing the Bank of America, can offer an explanation to a “bizarre” feeling permeating the economy. Nick Maggiulli, Coo de Ritholtz Wealth Management and author of the New York Times bestseller The riches scalepreviously talked to Fortune About the strange state of the economy in 2025 and concluded that “something weird happens”.

Maggiulli, whose book focuses on what his research indicates on the six emerging economic classes of the United States, said: “The economy has not been built to manage so many people with so much money”. He cited data showing that the upper middle class, with a net value of households between 1 million and 10 million dollars, went to only 7% of the country in 1989 to 18% in 2022/23, with a large part of this period of wealth from the pandemic.

UBS Global Wealth Management has also documented a spectacular increase in “everyday millionaire”, with a quadruple increase on a world basis since the beginning of the 21st century. Even after adjustment of inflation, their number has more than doubled in real terms since 2000. “There is a good part of the (millionaires every day) who have the impression of having enough,” said Maggiulli Fortune“And they feel like they are getting out, even if statistically, they are in 20% of American households.”