The S&P is sizzling hot and some indicate that there’s more steam to come

By Dian Vujovich

I ran across a great line in a recent blog from respected financial journalist Anatole Kaletsky: “New highs on Wall Street are much more likely to be springboards for further advances than peaks from which prices plunge.”

Kaletsky is a seasoned, award winning financial writer, author, etc. whose  work has appeared in the best of the best financial publications throughout the years. Like, The Economist and The Times of London. He’s now with Reuters and has a new book out that I’ll have to put on my summer reading list, “Capitalism 4.0”.

With respect to the S&P500s performance, Kaletsky wrote in a May 14 blog that there have been eight times during the past 100 years that the market has  broken through its  previous record highs by three percent or more. And,  then continued on to make higher market gains “and none experienced a significant decline for at least six months.”

Those eight happened  in December 1924, September 1954, September 1963, August 1967, May 1972, July 1980, November 1982 and July 1989.

It has taken more than 13 years for the S&P 500 to break through its now old all-time high record set of 1527 on March 24, 2000. Today,  May 17, 2013, it continued its weekly run to close at 1667.47.

Researchers give two reasons for the market’s run. One is  that the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan index is at 83.7—the highest its been since July 2007. The other that  the Conference Board’s leading indicators figure rose to 95.0 in April, the highest it’s been in about five years.

With good news seemingly everywhere, the big question investors who haven’t participated in this market’s run up over the past few years, or for that matter since Jan.1 of this year, have to ask themselves is: In light of all of this  positive news is it time to jump in?

Perhaps the easiest way to begin to answer that question is with another: Am I a long-term investor (like 5-years plus),  a short-term investor, or a day trader?