Since the stock market is down so much I have been buying something in the fourth quarter almost every week. I have been patient and have been expanding my watch list. The difficulty for me is that I feel like almost everything is on sale -- but is everything a bargain?

Maybe not; maybe I'm delusional. Perhaps that is because I am tuned into another time and place when I would have been dancing in the streets if I were able to acquire Anglo American ADR (NASDAQ: AAUK) or General Electric (NYSE: GE) for pennies on the dollar. Maybe that is all these stocks are worth? That is what Wall Street currently thinks. That is what Main Street currently thinks. There is a lot more bad news than good.

Then why is Warren Buffett buying, and Carl Icahn and Ken Heebner? After all, I'm just following in their shadows.

The reason is that most investors are simply focused on all the bad news. That is what has most folks' attention and that is making the market -- bankruptcies, billions of dollars in losses, government out of control, Wall Street out of control and more. There is also serious fear things will get worse. If you lost money in the stock market (all of us), or lost your job or your house or any combination of the above, then things look bleak and for now they are. However, we should not be investing for now; we should be investing for the future.

Consider the following elements that support a recovery in the next year. I do not mean a boom, just a recovery -- just a more positive investing environment.

1) By spring it is estimated the government will have poured $2 trillion dollars into an economy of $13 trillion over a 12-month period. Not only is this a market stimulus, but it may prove to be highly inflationary, and if so equities are a better place to be then cash.