Murray: I've never been more bullish on it than I am today. Again: Here you have the whole baby boom generation, being cattle-prodded toward retirement, totally confused by what's happened and therefore optimally receptive to sound advice ... just heaven. We just have to pray that the market doesn't go up too much more too fast, or else they'll get complacent again. Very tough to prospect complacency.

FA: When we touched base late last year, you were very positive on equities for this decade. Are you still?

Murray: I don't see how one can not be. Jeremy Siegel surveyed all the ten-year periods since 1871, and found that equities averaged a net real return (after inflation) of 6.66%. He found 14 ten-year periods of negative return, including this one. In the decade following every single one of the previous 13 negative episodes, real returns exceeded 10%-half again the long-term average, and about twice the average return (during those subsequent decades) of government bonds. Non-financial American corporations are the most liquid they've been since the early 1950s. The American worker is more productive than he's ever been, period. And, at 1150, the S&P is selling for a tad less than 15 times the current consensus 2009 earnings estimate of about $78-which keeps getting raised, and probably isn't done yet. These facts combined with the aforementioned wall of worry make my heart sing.

FA: Looking back on the last 30 months, from the market peak in October 2007 to now, what great lessons should advisors have learned for all time?

Murray: (1) That they'll never consistently be able to anticipate the economy. (2) That they'll never consistently be able to anticipate the markets. (3) That the more dramatic the next series of economic and market events, the less advisors (or anybody else) will have anticipated them. (4) That future relative performance is statistically unrelated to past performance, and that at major turning points relative performance doesn't matter. (5) That, when the spaghetti really hits the fan, there is no such thing as a "standard" deviation. And (6) the big one: That the world did not end, because it does not end. In a pinch, you can bag the first five lessons: If you really got that sixth one, you're set for your whole career.

FA: Thanks, Nick.

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