Dow 652,230! No, Really

Try to forget about Dow 10,000 for a minute. (C'mon, try. It won't hurt.) Instead, wrap your brain around Dow 31,460. Or, for those with even more ambition, try Dow 652,230 on for size.

No, these aren't the sci-fi fantasy forecasts of some market soothsayer or the predictions of Nostradamus (or even James Glassman). Instead, the seemingly unthinkable levels mentioned above are plateaus the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit at the end of 1998, according to a recent study by Roger G. Clarke, chairman of Analytic TSA Global Asset Management in Los Angeles, and Meir Statman, professor of finance at Santa Clara University.

Clarke and Statman arrived at the seemingly outrageous figures on the Dow by calculating its value as "wealth" index rather than a "capital" index. The distinction is fairly simple: A wealth index incorporates reinvested dividends while a capital index (as the Dow currently is) does not. ...