Foreign media say everything from building materials to bitcoin to stocks is soaring, reigniting fears of a bubble in global markets. Rarely have so many assets risen so much at the same time.

A wide range of price increases

Timber prices have risen to record highs, according to the Wall Street Journal. Home sales in the US are at levels last seen in 2006, before the housing bubble burst. The stock market is a runaway horse. Benchmarks from the United States to France to Australia have set new highs this year, with the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average recently recording their 23rd and 21st new records of the year.

The craze has spread far beyond the traditional markets tracked by Wall Street firms, the report said. Bitcoin topped $60,000 for the first time last month, before falling back somewhat. The price of the Dorgit also hit a new record. In venture capital, investors are giving startups more than five times as much money as they need, and the average startup valuation is at a record high.

The report notes that even sophisticated investors are baffled by the market's wild rise.

"This is very different from any other bubble we've seen," said Jeremy Grantham, co-founder and chief investment strategist at Grantham Mayo Van Otero. Grantham is best known for correctly predicting the bursting of the Japanese asset bubble in the late 1980s, the bursting of the dotcom bubble in 2000 and the 2008 real estate crisis.

"All previous bubbles have occurred when the economy looked almost perfect," he says. This time is completely different because the market has started an incredible surge against a backdrop of economic scars."

The market is crazy

Wall Street has seen this before, the report said. Investors' excessive enthusiasm for all sorts of assets bears some resemblance to the hot days of the Roaring '20s. The high valuations of tech stocks are also reminiscent of the dotcom boom and bust of 20 years ago.

Both episodes ended in dramatic crashes that took years for the stock market to recover, the report noted. The same signals then and now have many investors positioning themselves for the possibility of a broader correction. This correction is likely to wipe out not only panicked stock pickers but also speculators in other markets.

The current market environment is very different from the asset price booms of the 1920s, 1980s, 1990s and mid-2000s, the report said. Investors and analysts believe the latter has been driven by strong economic growth. For most of those periods, the Fed acted as a bubble prick, raising interest rates to keep asset prices in check and often inflation in check. But this time, the Fed rejects the idea that low interest rates are fuelling asset price bubbles.

Threatening the economic recovery

According to a report by Japan's Fuji Sankei Daily on April 28, the futures prices of corn, wheat and soybean on the Chicago Board of Trade, which are indicators of the international prices of agricultural products, respectively recorded their highest levels since 2013. It is these agricultural products that support people's tables around the world.

Unnormal weather in major grain-producing countries and other factors have led to a tightening of global grain supply and demand, the report said. At the same time, some grain-producing countries, including Russia, have also imposed export restrictions.

Wheat futures in Chicago closed at $7.395 a bushel, up 3.8 percent and the highest since 2013, according to reports. Corn and soybeans also traded at their highest levels since the spring of 2013. Corn prices have doubled in the past year, soybeans are up about 80% and wheat is up 30%. There are few signs of an end in sight to the strong rally.

The report said the high prices of agricultural products have begun to affect the retail sector. Retail prices for tortillas in Mexico, beef in Brazil and palm oil in Myanmar have all soared. In the United States, the price of meat such as bacon is also rising. The Bloomberg Spot Agricultural Index also posted its biggest gain in nine years last week.

"This trend is going to continue for a while," said Tosin Jack, an analyst at commodity data firm Mintec. "It's going to show up more in everyday consumer foods."

High food prices will have a major impact on household spending and businesses, posing a threat to the global economic recovery as it seeks to shrug off the impact of COVID-19, the report said. If food inflation picks up steam, household spending, already battered by job losses and falling incomes, will take another hit. Soaring prices in the context of low growth will force central banks to take unpopular policy options and could make additional quantitative easing more difficult.