Needless to say, all of the above is hugely positive for the stock market. It brings forecasts for a Dow 20,000 by 2015 and 100,000 by 2025 out of the realm of fantasy. It kind of makes today’s stock prices look dirt-cheap. Maybe that’s what the market is trying to tell us, if we only had the patience and the foresight to listen.

This doesn’t mean that you need to rush out and buy more stocks today. Some of these trends will take a decade or more to play out. Better entry points will no doubt present themselves this year. But the writing is on the wall for higher equity prices, not just in the US, but globally.