Sitting

clipped from www.smartmoney.com Consider stocks priced not in money, but in gold. Gold is a symbol for all the things you might want to buy. Let's say stocks double, measured in dollars. Terrific, right? Not necessarily. Suppose the price of gold doubles, too. Not so terrific. You can't afford to buy anymore gold now than you could have before your stocks doubled. Today, with stocks and gold each having risen over the last year — but with stocks rising more — one "unit" of the S&P can buy 99% of an ounce of gold. All we have to do is compare 73% a year ago to 99% now, and we can see that stocks, priced in gold, have risen 34.9%. Here's a chart showing the S&P 500 priced in gold over the last year. Here's the most troubling part. The entire 34.9% gain made by stocks — priced in gold, that is — was achieved in just the first five weeks of rallying from the March 2009 bottom. in reality they've just been sitting there. All risk, no reward.