Is the next crash inevitable or has anything changed?

Of course there will be another crash; remember that what drives crashes on a very high level point of view is simply that assets (i.e. shares etc.) gets overpriced and the economy slows down no longer being able to sustain that speculation. As economies grows and shrinks (and they do over time) the stock markets will go up and down as well. Now the level of fluctuation may change with rules and political actions but the general ebb and flow will never stop as long as there is any way, in any form, to speculate on the future. You can go back hundreds of years to tulip speculation, if a ship would manage to get to India for spices etc. so it's not like there's something new in that ebb and flow of value and speculation.

Boatlake wrote: »

I think QE should go a long way towards buffering any crash.
That with circuit breakers and opportunistic bottom feeders taking time out to reassess entry levels.
The stock market is not as exposed now as it was in 2008.

QE has been used in some form since 1940s; it does not stop the crash but simply reduce the overall negative effect of it when they happen. It also helps push for future crashes by making to much money available which goes into the bubbles.

Throw in Dodd Frank as long as its there. Basel too.

Dodd Frank is going soon; Basel will only partially protect "normal" banks but once again those where not driving the crash )see 1929 crash causing a huge credit contraction which exacerbated the issue). Remember that even during the sub prime crash the actual default rate was low (7% or so first year) but what crashed it was the lack of confidence between banks and the valuation of securities which meant no one trusted anyone's valuation on anything.

What do any of us know?
Wish I had a crystal ball.

We have had crashes for as long as we've had a financial system with possibility to guess future value of items; about the only thing that is true is that the crash will come. Before the Dot com crash for example people were talking about how we had hit a new high PE plateau which was going to last forever and PE values of 70+ was now to be considered normal. That will go as well then as it will go for us in the future; the only question is when, not if, the correction and crash comes.

It can be purely financial driven that the reports no longer motivate the high PE values (this would the nicest crash), it can be Trump driven (damage dependent on how stupid his damage is), it can be terrorist attack driven, it can be China's dodgy second hand bank sector that causes it (this one would be a world of pain event with currently 4 trillion USD in the shadow bank sector which could cause revolution and war in China) but one thing is for sure that when it hits this time it's going to be a bad one. Why? Because everyone who'd normally be more bond focused (i.e. insurance companies, pension funds etc.) have had to go stock market to get the returns the require which means more capital is invested than normally should be invested and two of the world's economies have serious legislation issues (USA and China respectively) while several smoldering pit fires (see European loan percentage France and south, see Greece still not sorted out, see Argentina & Brazil, see Japan, see ME countries etc.)