“What do you think the best year for the market has been since 1942?  The answer is 1954.  In 1954, the Dow, counting dividends, was up 50%.  Now if you look at 1954, we were in a recession a good bit of that time.  The recession started in July of 1953.  Unemployment peaked in September of 1954.  So until November of 1954 you hadn’t seen an uptick in the employment figure.  And the employment figure more than doubled during that period.  It was the best year there was for the market.  So it’s a terrible mistake to look at what’s going on in the economy today and then decide whether to buy or sell stocks based on it.”  Warren Buffett, CNBC Town Hall Event at Columbia University, November 12, 2009