At 4 o’clock yesterday, the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index SPX, +1.45% closed just off a record high. At 4:45, news hit that Michael Cohen, former lawyer for President Donald Trump, had pleaded guilty to campaign-finance felonies committed at Trump’s direction and featuring the president as co-conspirator.

Trump? He’s done.

And the overnight markets chugged on. In the morning, the U.S. markets opened mixed but mostly higher, which should pretty much negate any argument that this long bull market, which today becomes, by most measures, the longest U.S. bull market ever, depends on Trump’s political health.

Also read:Stock market can ignore Cohen and Manafort headlines — unless Trump does this

Some of us have been imagining a world without Trump in the White House since Nov. 8, 2016, but now the markets can, too. Truth be told, it doesn’t look bad. The usual things that end bull markets — looming recessions, excessive stock valuations, obvious bubbles in assets other than stocks — are either not present or well over the horizon.

And that’s why this bull market could last a while longer. Let’s say a year or a year and a half, before the real reckoning is likely to come.

Let’s look at some of the obvious reasons why markets crack, and how we stand now.

Valuation

The market is trading at 17.6 times this year’s projected earnings (which are slated to grow 22% this year) and 16 times earnings for 2019, when corporate profits will grow 10%, according to CFRA Research estimates. That’s not much, especially with interest rates still low.

“We see corporate earnings strength, particularly in the U.S., extending through year-end, as upbeat guidance signals company confidence,” BlackRock global strategist Richard Turnill said two weeks ago, as earnings reports flowed in. “Our analysis of corporate guidance suggests company confidence is on the rise — giving us conviction that earnings strength can power on in 2018 amid solid global growth.”

Recession indicators

Mutual-fund giant Pimco is out today with a report suggesting a risk of a recession — three years from now. Their view is just about right — you can see signs of the next recession from here, pressures that are building up and will cause problems, but they’re not here yet.

Housing data are getting soft — existing-home sales have fallen for the last four months, and new-home sales from builders like Toll Bros. TOL, +1.27% and Pulte PHM, -0.15% fell 5.3% in June — but they’re not collapsing. Consumer debts are at record highs, but thanks to low interest rates, the burden of servicing the debt is still very light by historical standards. Unemployment is low, but soft wage gains suggest they’re not too tight, and so on.

Any or all of these might contribute to the next recession, especially as interest rates rise, the way they do late in expansions. To that list you can add rising oil prices US:CLU8 and the uptick in inflation that energy prices have been driving this year.

But for now, discretionary buying shows consumers are still confidently spending.

Car sales are still at or near record highs, depending on the month — good for the likes of Ford F, -1.95% and General Motors GM, -0.56% . Sales at restaurants like Chipotle CMG, +1.44% and MCD, +0.99% have risen 8.3% in the last year, according to the Commerce Department.

This behavior says clearly that middle-class America isn’t feeling cyclically strained, and neither are companies (and stocks) like Walmart WMT, +0.08% or Walt Disney DIS, +0.83% that make their serious money when consumers are spending.

As Trump’s presidency swirls toward its fate, between the Scylla of impeachment and the Charybdis of new polls showing Trump trailing former Vice President Joe Biden by 12 points if they run against each other in 2020, the clear conclusion is how right Wall Street was about him all along.

The view in late 2016, after the initial shock of his election passed, was that Trump would be good for the economy. Then, the conventional wisdom suggested, things would cool off as the impact of Trump’s protectionist policies was felt.

That helped produce a 20% market gain in 2017, and, true to form, this year has been rockier. Stocks have moved up when earnings are in the spotlight (like now — hence the highs), and wavered when the president threatens trade relations with Europe, Canada or China. There has been plenty of anecdotal reporting about farms and factories losing business over new tariffs the U.S. and China have imposed, but they’re not in the data — yet.

This year, we’re up 7% so far, more or less consistent with next year’s expected profit growth. So investors have done a decent job separating signal and noise.

Whether it can last depends only a little on politics. The consumer is in the driver’s seat, with trade concerns a distant second on the list of things that might downshift the real economy any time soon.

And think about who consumes the most in America: Hillary Clinton beat Trump in counties producing almost two-thirds of gross domestic product, dominating among young people and well-educated consumers even without being very popular herself.

If Trump falls, those folks aren’t going anywhere. Heck, they might even go out to dinner to celebrate.