Chung: Where the wealth effect tends to play out very directly is in upper-end consumers that have a lot of discretionary income. We're watching very carefully how the luxury goods manufacturers, or companies that service higher-end consumers, are doing. They've seen some of the strongest comebacks. It seems very unlikely that that gets derailed in 2011. I think sentiment improves, as does spending on higher-end luxury items, and more actual investing in U.S. stocks, something that even high-end consumers have been shy of in the last couple years.
Cohen: The wealth effect impact will be very different on middle-income investors than on others. For many middle-income families, their most significant asset is still their home. Middle-income families and lower are skewed much more towards fixed income. So even if we were to see a meaningful rally in stocks, the impact would be very uneven in terms of which families would benefit.
