How is the stock market today compared to the stock market of the 1930s?

How is the stock market similar or different today than it was back in the 1930s?|||Other the FDIC, it's pretty much the same.|||The presence of Internet and other avenues of communication have made it very easy to disseminate information rapidly. For this reason, there are likely to be very few "bargain stocks," i.e. stocks that are heavily undervalued. Information travels almost instantaneously, so any important tidbit is likely to get factored into any company's stock price fairly quickly.





However, I would wager that speculation in the stock market is just as prevalent, if not even more prevalent than it was back in the 1930s. There are still plenty of investors who are willing to place huge bets on a stock(s) hoping to snag a big gain.





All in all, in today's stock market, undervalued stocks, or at least heavily undervalued stocks, are quite rare. However, overvalued stocks and the potential for investors to overvalue stocks and take huge risks is just as common as it was in the 1930s, if not more common than the 1930s.|||To the guy above, no bargain stocks??? did you not see Barclays at 47p, or some of the miners that are up 1000% since March??





Markets are and always will be driven by FEAR and GREED, regardless of information flow therefore stocks will always go to ludicrously expensive levels (Dot com) and ludicrously cheap (March '09) and they alway always will because that's human nature, and while we tend to think this time is different, and we're above it, we never will be.





In 1930s the market was far more bearish than today, but then US unemployment was 25% and turning the death spiral of the US economy around was very very difficult (in fact it took WWII)