I don't really agree with this article. Number 4 goes out of its way to cherry pick periods starting from a stock market boom as examples. This is not really re

I don't really agree with this article. Number 4 goes out of its way to cherry pick periods starting from a stock market boom as examples. This is not really relevant for today's markets because the boom has already passed and we are in a slump. Number 6 is especially egregious. Think about the reasoning behind this for a second: "The widely quoted price/earnings (PE) ratio, which compares share prices to annual after-tax earnings, can be misleading. That's because earnings are so volatile -- they're elevated in a boom, and depressed in a bust." Are we currently in a boom or bust? If we were in a boom, then they might have a point that corporate earnings are higher than they will be in the future and that the P/E ratio therefore makes stocks look better than they are. But I don't think anyone can say that we are in a boom. We are instead in a very serious recession. So the above paragraph would mean that the P/E ratio actually underestimates the values of stock which means that stocks are even better buys than they would initially seem. I don't know why the WSJ seeks to deflate demand for stocks now when stocks are relatively cheap after trying to inflate and encourage demand right before the crisis when stocks were really expensive. But I would not trust their advice much.