the DOW went over 10,000 yesterday!

The stock market is manipulated by the brokers to build the confidence of the people and to make or lose points as they will. It's not a natural progression and can only show a true trend if the numbers stay up there. On any given day, a stock can be picked out to "push" up or down, depending on the need of the broker/investors. Many times a stock is pushed in order to get new investors to join in. They have always called it "playing the market" and it truly is a game and shouldn't be tackled by amateurs unless you have a lot of extra cash to spare. If you watch the market/economic shows on television, you are probably already aware that they were really pushing to hit the 10,000 mark this month because it was in October of 1929 that the crash came and traditionally October is a bad month for the market. They set a goal to have it reach the magic mark this month, because they are hoping to instill confidence in the economy and market again. I would take a wait and see attitude because as deep as our recession has gotten, I truly think it will take years not just months to recover. The figures can be manipulated, so I'm very cautious. Of course, I live in a city where the unemployment is the highest of our state, the foreclosure rate is staggering and there are absolutely no available jobs. This recession actually started after Sept. 11, 2001 (my husband getting laid off within 30 days of this date in the construction industry) so you can't possibly look at one day of 10,000 and say yippee. It's going to take much longer to recover than people want to admit.

I believe that the recession is over, but that the economy will not recover so fast. In the meanwhile, the depreciating US dollars means that many imported items will be more expensive. With so many jobless people around, the last thing they want is to see the high price of imported goods, even goods from China. I think the Dow will stay above 10,000 until a big company or a few big companies announce very bad third quarter result, then the one day fall will bring it below 10,000. Many people are not that optimistic about the economy yet.