Welcome to Thoughts on the Market.

I'm Andrew Sheets, Chief Cross-Asset Stragist for Morgan Stanley.

Along with my colleagues bringing you a variety of perspectives, I'll be talking about trends

across the global investment landscape and how we put those ideas together.

It's Friday, July 16th at 2pm in London.

On a recent episode of this podcast, we discuss similarities between today and different

points in time.

Our focus was on the first half of 2004, a period of consolidation that followed a large

rally in the markets, even as the underlying economy improved, a period that we think

has a number of similarities to conditions today.

But other comparisons continue to pop up, and one popular focus is on the late 1990s.

It was one of the few periods in history where stock markets traded at more expensive

valuations than they do today.

It was also a period that saw a sharp rise in the activity of individual investors and

individual stocks and the dawn of lower-cost online trading.

On the surface, the similarities are pretty straightforward.

Over the last 18 months, individual investor activity in the stock market is surged, lower

costs for online trading, the fact that many people were stuck at home and couldn't

spend money in usual ways, and a very strong overall market all helped drive activity

in single stocks and single stock options to unusually high levels.

The conversations might have moved from AOL to Reddit, but some similarities with the

90s remain.

...