I dunno dude. Gas prices over here are 4 dollars+ per gallon and it does appear to have an obvious effect on the local economy.
1) The roads dont seem as crowded as they were a year or so ago.
2) On weekends, you dont see as many people out and about. Weeknights are practically dead.
3) Most of my buddies report that in their respective businesses things have slowed to a crawl.
4) The local highway patrol seems to be binging on ticket giving as the state is running out of cash from not as many taxes in the bin this year.
5) The food store prices are out of this world.
6) Real estate prices have dropped about 30%.
7) Most of the conference calls seem to tell a story of economic weakness i.e. GE. Some airlines are merging or declaring bankruptcy.
8) Reports of lay-offs everywhere.
9) How high will oil go? 125? 150? The OIH is starting to look like Google in its early years.
10) Certain car dealers in my area have either shut-down or scaled back operations. All of them appear slow and never any customers.
All of the above doesnt bode well for anyone but the oil companies. The consumer is no longer out there meaning less electronics being purchased, less of everything being purchased.
Im not certain how the indexes can go higher. The reason why they havent fallen in the abyss is because of a lot of juicing by Bernanke, Bush, Paulson and the Fed.
Quote from stock_trad3r:
The indexes are driven by fundamentals and not by technicals, which is why relying on moving averages, double top/triple top, head and shoulders, and other mumbo jumbo to predict the direction of the markets doesn't work. A lot of people lose a lot of money trying to use technical signal.
The fundamentals are pretty good and valuations aren't excessive, unlike in 2000. This is why it isn't going much lower.
I highly recommend EWZ or EEM to capitalize on this uptrend as a single 'set it and forget' investment.
werd