Any central bank intervention in their domestic stock market is a huge concern and that stock market should be heavily discounted due to blatant manipulation. If the Federal Reserve is doing this such a statement includes the US market. It is a travesty to capitalism and capitalist price discovery.

Exxon is a strong company, however, the focus on dividends these days is disconcerting. Exxon would be fine if it cut dividends to save up to buy more oil fields on the cheap in the downturn. The real value of Exxon is it can still grow revenue and profitability long term, not that it pays a decent dividend alone.

That said, Exxon is a very safe long term investment.

IBM is not doing all that great and remains overly defensive which is why their revenues are so poor. The good news is IBM can change and has been changing slowly. Watson won't save IBM unless it can replace management and influence IBM's culture. IBM needs to focus on tech and grow with trends not be grudging followers of technology after the fact. As with tech, invent or die, and get to market and grow before someone eats your lunch. IBM needs to adopt this attitude and stop just trying to eat people lunches. It's not the biggest boy in the tech market anymore.

The US stock market performed very well considering the rest of the world.

Sadly the US savings rate, despite Fed and others saying we save too much, is not that high. And sadly, like capitalism has always dictated, those who save and put money into capital investment end up the long term winners. It is unfortunate Fed policy encourages the exact opposite behavior from that which will keep us as long term global winners.

Most of Apple's debt is in US dollars and most of its cash is in foreign currencies. I think many can see the potential problems that can arise from that, especially since it has no intention of ever reversing this. One needs to discount such facts before buying purely on cash and debt ratios.

I would watch housing and land prices first. I think that is the landmine that will be crossed first. That said, I don't expect any near term meltdown as fiscal stimulus is what both candidates are promising without even a hint of being fiscally prudent. Long term this is bad but apparently no one in power cares about long term anymore and fiscal conservatives seem as rare as dodo birds these days.

CVS is a good company and a long term gem that will certainly will benefit from the aging demographics. That said, short term is still a bit pricey.

I think there was hope that there would be inflation with commodity prices bottoming and rising in cases. However, I think people are realizing all it is doing is hurting companies which can't pass on the prices to consumers. This usually is what slowly starts a new leg of down cycle, however, likewise people expect the Fed and others to keep supplying funny money to keep the economy from cratering. What is keeping the stock market up is besides housing, there is few places you can place your money to make money anymore. Stocks are the best game around still unless you want to take huge long term chances in real estate. Many people remember what happened to the late comers to real estate the last cycle and don't want to be the repeat losers.

They can't have their cake and eat it too. Their policies are what has caused the explosion of asset prices and there is no reason to stop it until they stop the flood of money with nowhere to go but to equities and real estate. Sadly, real estate gains are killing the market and hurting growth as housing costs skyrocket on their policies.