Dalio just bet $1.5 billion on a market sell-off soon You know the news will be bad when you get extremely divergent stories. Consumer sentiment is probably up, not because people are ACTUALLY optimistic about the economy, but because, in spite of the mounting evidence of a downturn, they WANT to be optimistic about the economy. The article about higher consumer sentiment also cited that fact that the last time consumer sentiment was this high was in 1998-2000, just before the dot.com bubble burst.
Meanwhile, the world's largest hedge fund, run by the man made famous for correctly calling the 2008 financial crisis, just bet $1.5 billion on a market correction:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/22/bridgewater-associates-bets-over-1-billion-on-wintertime-sell-off.html
Hold your gold, and don't give it away to the short-sellers.