What history tells us about the future.

[KMyer]

The following article made a lot of sense to me when I read it exactly five years ago before today. I decided to stay 100% invested in equities after I read the article.

Seeds of a New Boom for Stocks? -- The Motley Fool

The stock market has generated about a 100% return over the last five years.

The point of the article turned out to be correct.

What is history telling us about the future in 2017?

 

[audreyh1]

That it could be 2007 all over again? Or not? It's really hard to figure out what history tells us about the future until it becomes the past.

Hard to see a new bull cycle beginning with such a high P/E. Usually bull cycles begin after a serious rout, which means the last bull cycle began after the crash in 2008, and is already getting close to 9 years old.

Oh - wow - this article was written in Jan 2012, so it is already 5 years old!

 

[DrRoy]

It would certainly be great if we are in the early years of a boom cycle. 10 years from now we will know.

 

[UnrealizedPotential]

I would like to think we are going to continue the good times. When I look at the PE ratio of the stock market and all the things that can go wrong it seems unlikely without a bear market growling back in the picture. I am tempted to save money and wait for cheaper prices but that is market timing and I am a long ways from being that good. So I continue to reinvest every month and when a correction comes I will be in a good position to take advantage of it. Besides, sitting and waiting for cheaper prices with all that cash doing nothing is hard. It takes a lot of patience. Reinvesting monthly is easy.