Less than a month ago, the stock market was in free fall, as a torrent of bad news about the coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout drove investors to dump stocks. Just as swiftly, the market has rebounded, even as millions of people lose their jobs every week and the country is destined for a recession.

Can the rally be trusted?

The word on Wall Street is a tentative yes. More people are embracing the idea that stocks have “bottomed” — investor parlance for the lowest the market will go — and won’t fall below the depths they reached on March 23, when the S&P 500 stock index was 34 percent below its high from just over a month earlier.

Don’t celebrate just yet: Even if they don’t anticipate another sharp plunge, most observers hardly expect the market to soar, either. Investors who are wading back into the water are getting confusing signals: Quarterly earnings are shrinking and corporate reports provide few clues about the future, while rising stock prices are hard to square with the mounting toll of an unprecedented economic collapse.

What’s more, the combination of rising shares and reduced profits is making the market look incredibly expensive, according to a metric widely used by investors to value the market, the price-to-earnings ratio.