CHICAGO (AP) - As a historic bull market reaches its second birthday, everyday investors are piling back into stocks, finally ready for more risk and hoping the rally has further to go.
The Standard & Poor's 500 index has almost doubled since March 9, 2009, when it hit a 12-year low after the financial crisis. And the Dow Jones industrials are back above 12,000, about 2,000 points shy of their all-time high.
Little-guy investors appear to be on board. Since the beginning of the year, investors have put $24.2 billion into U.S. stock mutual funds, according to the Investment Company Institute. They withdrew $96.7 billion in 2010.
"It didn't feel right to be back in until now," says Richard Dukas, who heads a public relations firm in New York City. "I still don't want to put all my money in the market, but I believe we've come through the worst of it."
After the 2008 financial meltdown, Dukas and his wife converted their 401(k) retirement accounts into cash. They had been burned during the bubble in technology stocks a decade ago, and Dukas says he has been "extremely skittish" ever since.
Now Dukas, 48, says 85 percent of his portfolio is back in mutual funds, although he maintains a small cushion of cash.
More job security, strengthening retirement account balances and improvement in the overall U.S. economy are some of the factors that have brought everyday investors back to the market. A snapshot of what's happened:
• The outlook of investors as measured by stock newsletters and market surveys has been extremely bullish for two or three months, says Mark Arbeter, chief technical strategist for S&P Equity Research.
• Many workers have enjoyed seeing their 401(k) balances return to where they stood at the market's peak because they kept contributing during the down years. Many who have maintained their 401(k) accounts for a decade or longer still have some ground to make up because of their larger starting balances.
• Americans who still have jobs are as secure as they've been in 14 years. That's because the number of planned layoffs has fallen to a low, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
The combination has boosted confidence and brought investors back to a rising market. The Dow was trading Tuesday at around 12,200, up 86 percent from the 2009 low. It's still 14 percent below its all-time high in October 2007.
While the economy is improving, it will take a lot longer to erase the abject fear that average investors have felt about owning stocks the last two years, says Jason Trennert, chief investment strategist for Strategas Research Partners in New York.
Analysts point to signs that the run could keep going for quite a while, as long as the economy cooperates. Corporations are still sitting on billions of dollars in cash that they may ultimately put to work in the market.