You are correct. We all know how much money we have and we know it is not going nearly as far as it did.

The stock market is not a good indicator of how the middle and lower classes are fairing in the economy. The market is a daily snapshot of how the wealthiest people and the corporations are doing right now and how they perceive the immediate future. I do mean immediate. Those people actually do have a pretty good handle on the short term. The short term being today and perhaps the coming few weeks or months. Everything beyond that is still a relatively safe gamble most of the time. But the double zero is always on the wheel. When it does hit the fall can be swift and severe. It will be especially severe if the market is as overvalued as some analysts think it is.