Jerome Powell spent his final stretch as Federal Reserve chair delivering a message investors did not particularly want to hear: stocks are expensive, and the Fed is not in a hurry to make them cheaper to own. The line that traveled furthest was his observation that “by many measures,” equity prices were “fairly highly valued.” It was not a crash call. It was a warning about fragility — the kind of market that does fine until the backdrop shifts, then moves faster on the way down than anyone planned for.

That distinction matters, and most of the coverage blurs it. Powell did not predict a 2026 stock market crash. He flagged that rich valuations leave less cushion if growth, inflation, or policy disappoints. For anyone holding stocks or…