For Many, Rally Into Dow Record Feels Empty

By DANIEL WAGNER

WASHINGTON (AP) ⿿ The Dow roared to a record Tuesday. Yet the market's run-up feels worlds away from the lives of many Americans.

Wages have only recently started to recover after months of declines that stretched family budgets thin. Unemployment is stuck near 8 percent, high enough that most Americans still know people who are out of work. Signs of a housing recovery have boosted stocks, yet millions of people face foreclosure.

Here are five reasons why many Americans don't share Wall Street's cork-popping mood:

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Fewer people have money invested in the stock market, so many missed out on the rally.

Americans sold more stocks than they bought for a fifth straight year in 2012, despite unprecedented efforts by the Federal Reserve to juice the market and encourage investment. Americans have sold hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of stock ⿿ the first time on record that's happened during a sustained bull market. The market rise has been powered by companies buying their own stock.

The flight from stock markets has coincided with a series of confidence-rattling stumbles: last year's botched initial public offerings by Facebook and BATS Global Markets; the 2010 flash crash that sent the Dow plunging 600 points in five minutes; unprecedented volatility related to European and U.S. fiscal policy debates.

Confidence in the market was already weak after the harrowing financial crisis that peaked in 2008.

Americans who didn't buy stocks early simply haven't benefited from the rise that pushed the Dow up 118 percent since its recession low in March 2009.

There have been recent signs that investors are shifting their cash back into stocks. People who are buying now are banking on stocks continue to go higher. For them, the surge increased the cost of entering the market.

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Wages are stagnant and incomes are shrinking.

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