 Remember how for most of last year a recession was always lurking right around the corner? Now it seems like the consensus is almost entirely that we are going to have a soft landing and the economy is going to do well. Suryansh Sharma is an equity analyst at Morningstar. The recession never showed up. That is a big reason why banks are doing so well. Once investors and companies accepted that a recession is probably not coming soon, markets started doing really well. The S&P 500 is up 19% year to date.