by Ted Schwartz

As we near new “all-time highs” for the Dow Jones average, the financial services community seems about to throw a party. I say leave the champagne on ice! I don’t want to be a curmudgeon, but…..

The very lowest bar for any investor is the rate of inflation. If your investments don’t at least keep up with the rate of inflation, you have lost money in terms of real buying power. There is no reason to save if you do not at least keep your current buying power.

So, the Dow all time high was reached in October of 2007. The website Inflationdata.com has a calculator that computes the inflation from then through January of 2013 at over 10%. So, if we hit a “new high” it will mean that market losses over the past five plus years are all the way down to 10% in real terms! The clock will continue ticking on inflation, so who knows when you will finally really break even in this market. Hardly seems like a reason to celebrate to me.