When people ask me why I’m a long-term market bull, the answer is usually simple. I know enough about the resilience and creativity of the people running American corporations to bet against them for long. They’ve always found a way so far.

And they’re evidently finding a way now. The Fed kicked the collective bottom line into a tailspin all last year. Inflation forced management to choose between protecting their margins and alienating their customers. (Most chose to protect their margins.)

Then there was that recession that everyone expected a year ago but never happened. A slowing economy is not fun for any corporation . . . and in real terms, the economy felt stagnant even if it was humming along on the surface.

But that was then. Earnings went down all last year. Now they’re finally coming back up, faster than the analysts dared to hope.

We’re looking for roughly 3% year-over-year progress from the last quarter. Based on guidance so far, that’s going to accelerate in the current quarter . . . it is accelerating now. Things are getting better at a faster rate.

By the end of the year, the S&P 500 will be bringing in about 10% more cash than it did last quarter. That’s faster than usual. In the past decade, we’ve gotten about 7% growth a year on average.

The companies are in great shape. The challenge is that the stocks have gotten a little ahead. Valuations are rich even by the admittedly frothy standard of the past five years.

My message: don’t bet against the companies. They’re doing great. But that doesn’t mean you have to love the stocks when they get out of line with the fundamentals.

Pay a premium for the fastest-growing companies. That generally means smaller tech in the long run. NVDA and AMZN are okay but they’re expensive. META was undervalued but it isn’t growing as fast as it once did.

I prefer names like TTD, ARM, SPOT. Companies that achieved profitability recently and can now leverage any uptick in scale by expanding their margins. Efficiency is good.

And of course if you find a stock trading below 20X earnings, that’s what “cheap” looks like these days. Hold your nose if you want to make sure you’re buying at a discount.

Good companies can still make bad stocks. The reverse is rarely true. Hang in there. In a few quarters, the growth rate could accelerate . . . or the market could take a step down if the Fed is slow to cut.