WALL STREET is not a place where people put their expectations on the back burner - if they expect a rally they try to buy before prices rise and if trouble looms they sell.
These days, there seems little doubt that within a few weeks the market's blissful journey to record highs will be disrupted by unsavoury warnings about company profits. But in the meantime buying continues.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average has closed at record highs nine times in the past three weeks, including Friday's first-ever finish above 8,500.
But the expectation is that convulsions will resume shortly as multinational companies reveal losses as a result of Asian storms.
When stocks could not muster a rally in January with all the money flowing in from holiday bonuses and year-end retirement plan contributions, there were worries that the Asian crisis had scared investors enough to produce a lasting shift to safer investments.
Money market funds, the safest of the safe, took in a net US$35.5 billion in January after suffering a net outflow of $1.3 billion in December, the Investment Company Institute reported on Thursday.
