The fundamentals have not improved since before the DOW was at 6547. That is why. You are watching yet another bubble.
the cruelty to older people with fixed income is breathtaking the fed is basicly saying fixed income is a guaranteed loss, and 'equities' are a guaranteed win
Agreed. I don't expect the oldsters that got screwed last year are anxious to invest in equities again, and most likely the ones that do will go in near the actual top for a second beat down.
So true. When those that sold late last year come back to the market when it is 500 SPX points higher than the bottom, they will get crushed again. Wall Street carnival games continue, only the suckers change. The carnival barker remains.
The market has not gone up a lot in constant dollars. Inflation is a primary driver of the markets and the markets are discounting future inflation because the dollar has been falling in value relative to other currencies. When the economy turns around and earnings increases exceed inflation you should see some growth in the market other than what can be attributed to a falling dollar. For now, the market is essentially trading with the dollar. We are likely to have an up market in the latter half of 2010 because of the midterm election, so I would expect the dollar to remain relatively weak well into next year and perhaps weaken even a bit more --possibly to EUR/USD = 1.60-- in late summer-early Fall. Recent history shows that the market tends to go up before an election and gas prices tend to go down. (Goldman Sachs, for example, changed the waiting of gasoline futures in the GSCI before a major election, which had the effect of causing gas futures to be dumped and forced the price of gas lower. Or the party in power, for example, might release petroleum from the strategic reserve. That's happened too.) In the meantime, if the dollar strengthens, we could easily have a substantial pullback sometime between now and late Spring. This has a lot to do with the fed, and in recent years the fed has usually adopted policies favorable to the incumbent party before a major election. But anything can happen. But we should at least be aware of these factors that influence the market.