Market exuberance is back! Is it rational this time?

This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a Whitman's sampler of Bloomberg Opinion's opinions. Sign up here.  Today's Agenda FOMO could make this market rally echo 1998. Thanksgiving is a time for honesty about America's treatment of Native Americans. Chick-fil-A and Starbucks quit the culture wars. China-U.S. ties keep getting stronger in the bond market. Irrational Exuberance, Baby, One More Time In many ways, 2019 is basically 1998. Jennifer Aniston is on TV. Tom Hanks is in a big movie. People are talking about new "Star Wars" content. The president is about to be impeached.  It is also, writes Nir Kaissar, an almost supernaturally good time to be in the stock market, especially if you own certain tech stocks: Such charts tend to put one on the lookout for ugly reversals in that steroidal top line. By 1998, in fact, Alan Greenspan had already warned of "irrational exuberance" in the market. But it took another two years for his warning to bear nasty fruit in the dot-com meltdown. A very 2010s problem — FOMO, or Fear of Missing Out — helped keep the '90s market rally alive, Nir writes. And there are still enough market skeptics out there, all vulnerable to creeping FOMO, to keep today's rally going, too. Of course, history doesn't repeat itself exactly, and 2019 is very different from 1998. Most important, markets have since learned a second, maybe more powerful, fear than FOMO: Fear Of Fed Apathy, or FOFA. Three Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts this year, along with a round of bond-buying to calm the repo market, have boosted stocks and interest rates. But lately the "yield curve" — the gap between short- and long-term rates — has flattened again, notes Mohamed El-Erian. This happens when bond traders expect slower growth. A previous yield-curve inversion (long-term rates falling below short-term ones) got the Fed to act earlier this year. The market may be agitating for more now, Mohamed writes. Britney Spears had a song about this in 1998. Thanksgiving Turkey, Smothered in Guilt When I was a kid in the early 1800s, we were taught Thanksgiving was a celebration of the time friendly Native Americans kept heroic English pilgrims from starving to death, a win-win for all. Today we know this transaction involved nothing but loss on the Native American side of the ledger. In fact, Native American genocide has been the one project in which America's political parties have consistently cooperated, writes Tyler Cowen. If you want nothing but warm fuzzies at the Thanksgiving table this year, then maybe avoid this subject. (Or just express gratitude for the job market, as Michael R. Strain suggests.) But if the conversation demands an example of "both sides" being equally awful, or of how American heroism can suddenly vanish, then this shameful history does the trick. Chick-fil-A, Starbucks Meet in the Middle If you were producing an "Odd Couple"-like sitcom involving chain restaurants as the leads, until very recently you would have picked Starbucks and Chick-fil-A. One's a latte-slurping liberal from the Northwest! The other's a Bible-thumping conservative from the South! They can't agree on anything, including whose turn it is to take out the trash! But both chains have turned their culture-war swords into spatulas, writes Conor Sen. Chick-fil-A recently stopped giving money to groups opposed to LGBTQ rights, donations that had caused liberals to boycott the chain. Now some conservatives are mad. Starbucks still has that whole not-saying-Christmas cup thing going on, but otherwise it has assimilated into all corners of America — be they red, blue or purple. There's little chance they'll fall out of the top three U.S. chains at this rate. Telltale Charts The new Cold War between China and the U.S. isn't exactly showing up in the bond market, writes Brian Chappatta.  Ending college tuition, as Bernie Sanders wants, would gut financing for universities, writes Noah Smith, particularly if it depends on public coffers controlled by Republicans. Further Reading President Donald Trump can use trade-war talks as leverage to make China go easy on Hong Kong protesters. — Eli Lake The U.S. tax code treats all Americans living abroad like criminals. — Andreas Kluth  The history behind the movie "Dark Water" reminds us we still need unconflicted scientific studies of the harm products do. — David Michaels  It's all too easy to steal and sell art, as the $1 billion Green Vault heist makes clear. — Leonid Bershidsky  Translating "1984" into Russian is a reminder that it's still terrifyingly relevant. — Leonid Bershidsky  Dogs and people ended up running the world together with this ONE WEIRD TRAIT. — Cass Sunstein  ICYMI Mark your calendars for a Dec. 4 House Judiciary impeachment hearing. John "Papa John" Schnatter has thoughts, probably indigestion, about pizza. Billionaire Vinod Khosla 1, beach lovers 0. Kickers Area intruder picks the wrong 82-year-old woman to attack. (h/t Zoe DeStories)  A comet from another solar system is zipping toward Earth. New Yorkers staged a full Thanksgiving dinner on a subway train for some reason. Should TV shows be released weekly or all at once? Note: Please send pizza and complaints to Mark Gongloff at mgongloff1@bloomberg.net. Programming Note: Justin Fox will make this job look easy tomorrow. There will be no newsletter on Thursday or Friday. Regular weekend service resumes after that. Sign up here and follow us on Twitter and Facebook. FOLLOW US SEND TO A FRIEND You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Bloomberg Opinion Today newsletter. Unsubscribe | Bloomberg.com | Contact Us Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington, New York, NY, 10022