Generation Alt®: The New Movement in Alternative Investing

One. What Goes Up...

Did you hear the Dow is going to 36,000?

At least that’s what James Glassman, former Washington Post columnist and Undersecretary of State to President George W. Bush, argued in his 1999 book, Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting from the Coming Rise in the Stock Market. Co-written with Kevin A. Hassett, the title hinted at a steep rise in the stock market within five years.¹ The Dow^SM, of course, refers to the Dow Jones Industrial Average^SM, a market barometer that measures the price-weighted average of 30 actively traded blue chip stocks.² As it turned out, the bull market Glassman and Hassett predicted ended up being a bubble that popped when the Dow hit 11,722.98 on January 14, 2000.³ “One of my colleagues...told ...