IMO there will be increased investment driving the market through about 2005 or 2010. Much of what is driving this market is the immense addition of new retirement money that has to go somewhere, and the market is the somewhere right now. As always, more money chasing fewer goods (stocks) drives up prices. There aren't enough start-ups to soak up all the new money, so prices have to rise. Economics 101. But starting in about 5-8 years, as the first boomers hit their sixties and start retiring in earnest (I was the front end of the boomers, born in 44, and will retire by the time I am 60, in 5 years), they will a) stop investing through 401(k), IRA, and other retirement, programs and b) start drawing out their funds. They may also start switching some money from stocks into bonds, though I'm not sure about that. But the next generation is not big enough to replace all that money. Plus soc. sec. taxes will probably go up, sucking even more out of the market. Our generation is NOT going to sit back and let the Social Security we paid into all our lives desert us. And we will control enough votes to make sure it doesn't happen.
So with that massive shift in investment, I suspect that the market will slow down or even contract for a while starting in that general time frame. I haven't done detailed studies yet to try to estimate the exact effect because we're still too far away for that, but in two or three years I'm going to start looking seriously at the demographics, the inflows of new money, etc.
But come 2005 I will start being very aware of this and being prepared to pull a chunk of money out of the market into fixed investments to avoid the downturn.
In the end, and in the big picture, demographics drive all markets. We ignore that at our peril. |
