Many are questioning the duration of the current market cycle. Aren’t stocks due for a correction?  We are conditioned to expect a bear market periodically.  Commentators remind us of the average duration of bull markets, with the implication that the current expansion is long in the tooth.

While pressures that can trigger recessions can build over time, those pressures are largely absent in this bull market.  Post financial crisis recovery has been at a glacial pace.  Persistent unemployment, the anemic housing recovery, interest rates in extended remission, the specter of deflation looming as a threat; these factors point to a weak but gradually improving economy.

The increasingly interconnected global economy creates potential for macro risk, but it also creates new opportunities.  The US no longer dominates the world economy as it did in the post WWII era, but it is positioned to lead the expanding global economy with the increasing opportunities of a growing middle class abroad.