>Dumb question time: I see an inflection point in the 90s trend line
>around early 1995. Did they change some tax laws in early 1995, or
>could it be related to increased Wall Street confidence due to the
>Republican take-over of Congress, or do you think it's just a
>coincidence?
I don't think there were any significant tax changes, except for the increase on the top 1% that came with Clinton's first budget. More likely is that the Fed tightened for most of 1994, which is a major reason Mexico went bust, forcing the Fed to retreat. Fed funds went from 6% in early 1995 to 5.25% a year later, and under 5% when Asia broke. Financial crises elsewhere have been very good for U.S. stockholders - not only did they get lower interest rates, they got huge flight capital coming in.
I put up a log chart of the S&P (nominal & real, 1871-May 1999) at <http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/S&PLog.html>.
Doug