Enjoy the Good Times While They Last

This column was originally published on RealMoney on May 7 at 2:57 p.m. EDT. It's being republished as a bonus for TheStreet.com readers. For more information about subscribing to RealMoney, please click here.

It has been two months since the market bottomed out in its reaction to a bout of Chinese financial flu. The power move since then has not only regained the earlier high but also recovered to the prior trend line: The broad market is where it might have been had the Chinese contagion not happened and the then-existing trend maintained.

No real harm done: Oops, excuse me. Did I spill your drink? Let me get you another.

A recovery this sprightly has led to the term "parabolic" being loose in the land. Parabolic in the context of the stock market is often used as a pejorative; the implication is that what goes up on a path that looks like the left side of the big hat Hoss used to wear on "Ponderosa" episodes is destined to come down on the right side. (What? You don't remember? Or your cable provider doesn't offer a channel of old television series?)

Good times in the market always bring out those who remind us we don't deserve it. Bad times, in contrast, tend to give the parabola wielders great satisfaction that all is right with the world.

Strangely, it does appear that much, if certainly not all, is right with the world. The Financial Times' chief economics commentator, Martin Wolf, took the time last week to extract the juice from the International Monetary Fund's most recent World Economic Outlook.

He noted booming growth: "In 2006, for example, the world economy expanded by 5.4%. The advanced economies grew by 3.1%, while emerging and developing economies grew by an astonishing 7.9%," as well as "the success in controlling inflation, notwithstanding the strength of commodity prices, particularly oil."

He also notes that the IMF expects the global economy "to remain on track for robust growth in 2007 and 2008" and comments that this is "as close to euphoria as one is likely to get from economists."