Dow Jones Industrial Average - 1999 to Present
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Market participants put on their party hats and started cheering in 1999 when the DOW crossed 10,000 for the first time. They have been cheering pretty much nonstop ever since.
Admittedly there was a bit of a party lag between early 2005 and late 2008 but the party hats have been working overtime since mid-2008 as shown below.
Dow Jones Industrial Average - October 2010 to Present
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Lost Decades Comparison
Please bear in mind that some pessimists liken the above behavior to a period of stunning underperformance of the Japanese Nikkei Index over the last two decades.
Japan's Two Lost Decades
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The Perpetually Optimistic Mish
Being the ever-optimist that I am, I want to quickly point out that while Japan essentially went straight down over two decades, the US by comparison has put in stunning outperformance by going nowhere.
Indeed, the Dow Jones Index is remarkably sitting exactly where it was in April of 1999, over 10 years ago while the Nikkei over the same timeframe fell by about 50%.
Optimists such as myself have only one thing to say: Hallelujah!
Meanwhile doom and gloomers like Robert Prechter think the Dow will fall to 1,000.
To that I say "Poppycock" (pretty harsh language indeed for those who know me well).
By my optimistic comparison, I think the Dow's downside is 5,000. That is a stunning 400% more optimistic appraisal of the current state of affairs than Prechter.
Furthermore, I freely admit that the DOW, instead of dropping, just may meander around 10,000 for another decade.
Wow. Except for public pension plan assumptions, imagine the parties we can have over that!
Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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