The Dangerous Temptation of Super-Cheap Stocks

(3 of 3)

We appear to be eight years into another of those long, secular bear markets like the one from 1965 to 1982, or 1929 to 1949. If you're looking for a bottom, an end to the pain, you're very likely to be disappointed. "Bear markets behave rather like Lucy in the Peanuts cartoon strip," Phil Coggan writes in this week's Economist. "Just when Charlie Brown is persuaded to attempt to kick the football, she snatches it away."

The corporations whose shares trade on the stock market today are for the most part valuable entities, and the employees of many of them will find ways to make them even more valuable in the future — something that cannot be said of gold or real estate or baseball cards, which is why stocks can be expected to outperform all of those assets over time. It stands to reason that it's better to buy into stocks at today's prices than at those that prevailed a year ago. But it's also possible that they'll be even cheaper next year.