The Big Nine-000 for Dow

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Here's some perspective: It's been 3600 points since "irrational exuberance" shook the markets in December 1996. That's 40 percent in 17 months. And now that investors big and small are looking over their shoulders at the big 9000, they're asking (or should be) -- how long can this possibly last?

TIME Wall Street columnist Daniel Kadlec has been worried about an overvalued market for, well, as long as it's been overvalued. But these days, he concedes, the numbers don't matter anymore. "You can't fight a bull market like this," he says, because it comes out of "a perfect economic situation" -- earnings have been OK, interest rates are still low, and Asia's problems have been "shoved to the background," he says. "You have to respect what's going on." Investors get the same advice as ever: Jumping into stocks whole hog is still a dangerous proposition, even if the pickings look easy.

But as the saying goes, it's always time to buy until it isn't. "If Asia stays minor -- which personally, I doubt -- and interest rates stay down, there's no reason this shouldn't continue," Kadlec says. "We could have 10,000 by May -- this thing is out of control."