One thing I want to point out as well is that things in the market only appear to fluctuate when the dollar is the anchor and lens at which you view things, as if it’s not the dollar fluctuating. What if it’s gold that remains stable value and it’s the dollar bumping up and (mostly) down in comparison to everything else?
It’s like being on earth staring at the starry night. It looks like you’re standing still and the universe is rotating around you, yet the astronaut in space looks at earth and sees that it’s the thing that’s rotating.
An example other than gold… the value of a house is pretty stable and doesn’t really change over the years. It provides a roof, heat, privacy, and a place to live. Owning one is probably not any more or less meaningful than it was 10 years ago. But the dollar price changes a lot, probably because it’s the dollar fluctuating in comparison to the house rather than the other way around.
A lot of the fluctuation we’ve seen in equities and goods lately has been an enormous printing of dollars in 2020-2021, which means that it’s actually the dollar that devalued while most everything else could have stayed relatively stable. It’s why the stock market, gold, bitcoin, food, movie tickets, cars, houses, etc are at all time highs.
Once we stop viewing things in the market in terms of its $$$ dollar amount and start viewing everything as items in a basket to trade (including the dollar), the market makes a lot more sense.