Main Street's Sharp Turn Off Wall Street

摘要

If you're a typical American, the one leading economic indicator that you run across in your daily life is the stock market. You can barely turn around, it seems, without hearing, seeing or reading what the Dow industrials or the Nasdaq composite are up to. So you doubtless know that stocks have been on a tear since Sept 21, the market's low point of post-9-11 trauma. The Dow and Standard&Poor's 500 are both up more than 20 percent since then, and the Nasdaq is up more than 40 percent. All right! Those of us with stocks―and there are millions more of us than there used to be―are feeling much better than we did. But now for the big questions. First, does the market's rise mean that the end of the recession and prosperity are just around the corner? And second, should you bet the moon and plunge deeper into the market because the happy days of double-digit returns are back? The short answers are; (1) maybe, and (2) I sure wouldn't.