The stock market and the economy have never really been converged though. Stock prices are based on nothing more than the supply and demand of the stock itself. That supply and demand has nothing to do with how well a company is actually doing. It usually tracks company performance but if everyone wanted to buy the stock of a bankrupt company, the stocks value would still rise. It’s all an illusion and it never had anything to do with the economy which is actually just the aggregate confidence of consumers and businesses in the future.