Worries Rebound on Bull's Birthday
Investors celebrating the new bull market's first birthday on Tuesday may remember a less happy milestone on Wednesday: the 10-year anniversary of the peak of the technology-stock bubble.</br></br>The great debate among stock-market analysts these days is whether the market has finally worked off years of excessive prices and can return to steady growth.</br></br>Optimists argue that two brutal bear markets have left stocks cheap and attractive, especially if the government's economic-recovery initiatives succeed. They say investors who were too optimistic in the 1990s are too pessimistic now, and that a recovery in corporate performance could offer investors happy surprises.</br></br>But some of those who warned of trouble a decade ago are worried again today. They say government interventions in the economy and the market in 1998, 2001 and 2008 kept stocks from fully correcting. Some see signs of bubbles starting to inflate again, notably in certain developing-country stocks.</br></br>This uncertainty has fueled a prolonged debate between two old friends, renowned economists Robert Shiller and Jeremy Siegel. They say they've been chewing over the issue during vacations together at the New Jersey shore. Mr. Shiller, a Yale University professor whose book "Irrational Exuberance" warned of the tech bubble just before it burst in 2000, still worries about the market's future. Prof. Siegel of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, whose book "Stocks for the Long Run" was the bible for many investors in the 1990s, is bullish.