Who's been buying?

The US stock market is massively overvalued by many historic metrics.

The Shiller Price/Earnings ratio has only been this high once since the Great Depression, and that was during the high tech bubble...

http://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe/

The Q Ratio also says that we are in uncharted territory....

https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2017/11/02/the-q-ratio-and-market-valuation-october-update

So, with the market arguable massively overvalued, the question is….who has been buying stocks at these levels?

Here is the answer. It looks like much of the market’s price growth has been a result of companies borrowing cheap money, and buying back their own shares in the stock market, which has the effect of increasing the price.  See here…

And here….

This implies that much of the the trillions of US dollars that have been lent to Corporate America courtesy of historically low interest rates - the lowest in human history - to expand the economy has instead been going to pump stock prices, which, of course, fattens the pocketbooks of the people who own/manage those companies.

America is about to do new corporate tax cuts to spur investment, with no requirement that anyone invest any money in anything. Given Corporate America's preference for paying itself rather than investing, and given that these tax cuts could just as easily go as bonuses to the wealthy people who run these companies, is it fair to say that everyone should know at this point that this policy won't work?

This what type of cat?...