According to Businessweek on March 9, 2009, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index closed at a 12-year low of 676.53, marking the bottom of the worst bear market since the Great Depression. Three years later the economy is improving, corporate profits are booming, and the S&P 500 has almost doubled. None of that has been enough to rekindle Americans’ love of stocks.
Trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYX) has declined to the lowest level since 1999, with average volume over the 50 days ended March 5 slowing to 768.4 million shares, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The 50-day average for stocks on all exchanges and exchange-traded funds fell to 6.58 billion shares on March 5, the lowest in Bloomberg data, which goes back to June 2008....
Investors pulled more money from mutual funds that buy U.S. stocks than they deposited for a fifth straight year in 2011, the longest streak in data going back to 1984, according to the Investment Company Institute in Washington. Outflows totaled $2.13 billion in January. Withdrawals were $135 billion last year, the second-highest total after 2008. “The stock market has effectively doubled since the March ’09 low, and we’re still in redemption territory for equity funds,” Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab, said in a February interview.
One reason investors are shunning equities is that 2011 was among the most volatile years on record….
Wait, wait...there's more at http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-03-08/the-bull-market-turns-three-dot-wheres-the-party
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