A Bull Market Should Make Investors Happy. This One Isn’t.<br />According to Mr. Bernstein, Wall Street experts on average advise investors to put 55<br />percent of their portfolios into stocks, as opposed to other assets such as bonds.<br />He said that by this point of a strong equity run, buying stocks traditionally becomes widely accepted<br />by all investor classes — the consequence of one outstanding stock market year following another.<br />“Investors have never felt less secure, even though we are eight years into a bull market,” Mark H. Haefele,<br />the chief investment officer in the wealth management division at the investment bank UBS, told the crowd.<br />“They are looking for approval to jump on the bandwagon.”<br />Still, she points out, retail investors have nowhere near the commitment to stocks that characterized past stock market booms.<br />Liz Ann Sonders, the chief investment strategist for Schwab, said<br />that until just recently, investors have been highly skeptical that the market’s bull run was justified.
