Ben is to the stock market as Lance Armstrong is to bike racing.
Why the steroids Ben? The "emergency" rates don't seem appropriate when stocks are at record highs. Are they emergency rates still? Accommodative? Accommodative for what? Higher employment? Well, low rates creating 'maximum" employment is a theory and we haven't quite proven its effectiveness in an international arrangement in which cheap labor around the world supplies us, indirectly, the manufacturing for our needs and wants. And what of the third unspoken mandate of the Federal Reserve? "Moderate interest rates" are supposed to be maintained by the Federal Reserve per its mission statement.
Record low interest rates are not moderate by any metric. The term moderate refers to "not extreme." These rates are extremely low.
As long as Ben Bernanke decides to keep money loose, the stock market will rise.
Restated, as long as one man holds to one mindset, the market will rise.
Does this sound like a free market? Or, does it resonate as a managed affair sponsored by a semi private powerful agency run by one unelected man? Bernanke is arguably the most powerful man in the word without a military.
As models and programs chase historically modest dividend returns one wonders of the fragility of this entire arrangement. The money is in a forced accommodative low rate mode by the Federal Reserve. It is reasonable to assume that free rates would be somewhere above the current near zero rates forced by Bernanke.
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