Transcripts

"Two Ways to Play" -Kevin Depew of Minyanville

SUSIE GHARIB: With Dow 10,000 making headlines again, tonight's "Two Ways to Play" asks the question, can it last? Here's Kevin Depew of Minyanville and Minyanville's Kevin Depew with some answers.

KEVIN DEPEW, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, MINYANVILLE.COM: Today in financial markets there are essentially two camps: inflationists on one side, deflationists on the other. The inflationists are expecting a dollar collapse, higher interest rates and sharply higher commodities which will eventually weigh on stock prices. The deflationists are expecting a rising dollar as debt is destroyed, lower stock prices and lower commodities due to a collapse in global demand. It's almost become conventional wisdom that we'll either experience an inflationary bust or a deflationary depression. But when everyone agrees, something else is probably going to happen. More than likely, we'll do what we've always done: muddle through. Apparently, all it takes is Dow 10,000, the 3.0 version to get people to forget about the debt crisis. Remember, this is the third time we've crossed 10,000 to the upside since 1999. And let's not forget what stock prices did during the great depression. After hitting a low of roughly 44 in 1932, the Dow quickly rebounded to 100, which is exactly where it traded 10 years later in 1942. If by muddling through, one means a decade of persistent high government debt, a stagnant economy, high unemployment, low interest rates and weak stock prices, then I'm not sure what the difference is between collapse and muddling through.