cover image Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting from the Coming Rise in the Stock Market

Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting from the Coming Rise in the Stock Market

James K. Glassman. Crown Business, $25 (304pp) ISBN 978-0-8129-3145-7

The only thing missing from this half-time speech of an investment book is an exhortation to buy stocks for the Gipper. Despite the sensationalist title, Glassman, a syndicated columnist, and Hassett, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who used to be an economist at the Federal Reserve, argue only the classic case for investing in stocks: that over long periods of time stocks have always outperformed alternative investments. But no motivational device is spared to make this case more strongly than it has ever been made before. Experienced investors will wince at the simplification and overstatement as the authors, in their effort to obliterate the arguments of anyone who has ever suggested that stock prices might actually fall, brush aside considerations like risk, dividend yields and price-earnings ratios. These and all other objections are downed out by the drumbeat of Dow 36,000! How do they arrive at this number? In several different ways, none of which is described in detail. Over long periods of time the Dow goes up, with inflation if nothing else. In the last two decades, it has been rising at a rate that makes it triple every seven years. So predicting that the Dow will triple eventually is not saying much. The key question for investors is, will it triple fast enough to make stocks an attractive investment? Here the authors fall into confusion, suggesting, in the space of seven pages, that it could happen in three years or 10 years. This last prediction implies that the stock market will actually do worse in the next decade than it has in the previous two. Agent, Rafe Sagalyn. First serial to the Atlantic Monthly; BOMC alternate selection; Money Book Club main selection; 5-city author tour. (Sept.)