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On Business Week’s Web site, there’s a poll asking people where the Dow will be a year from now. Obviously, this isn’t a scientific sampling but I was struck how pessimistic the answers are.

The last time I check, the answers were as follows:

10,000 or below.......15.9%
Around 10,500.........12.9%
Around 11,000.........25.3%
Around 11,500.........27.1%
12,000 or higher......15.5%
Not sure....................3.4%

That means that the median is “around 11,000.” I won’t predict that the Dow will hit 12,000, but I think it’s entirely reasonable that it could. That’s a little over 10% from where it is today which is in the middle of the long-term average. Yet only one in six respondents said “12,000 or higher.” Strange.

I normally would expect polls like this to be overly optimistic. Maybe I’m reading too much into this, or perhaps the public is much more pessimistic that I realized.

Posted by edelfenbein at December 29, 2005 12:21 PM