PALO ALTO, Calif. (CNN/Money) - The theorists of hope have a bevy of reasons to plunge back into the stock market right now. Among them: Bond yields aren't much better than dividend yields, October has marked the end of many a bear market, stock valuations are more attractive than they've been in years, Wall Street finally is policing itself.

All good arguments. And ones, I should add, that factor into my own practice of dollar cost averaging into my stock and bond funds, which -- often to my regret these days -- I've done throughout the painful bear-market declines.

Recently by Adam Lashinsky Reg FD: It works! A nation of investors Could it actually get worse?

But always keep in mind the chief reason TV pundits and other talking heads postulate a return to stock-market prosperity: Their livelihoods depend on it. If your time horizon is many years, most rational people still think you're best off investing in stocks now. But if the topic is where the market is going soon, the discussion comes back to the economy...and the economy is rotten.

What's more, there's little to suggest it's getting better. Layoffs accelerate, just the latest being vanquished tech supplier Commerce One (CMRCD: down $0.33 to $2.70, Research, Estimates), crippled investment bank J.P. Morgan (JPM: up $0.43 to $16.97, Research, Estimates) and mutual fund king Fidelity. The West Coast dockworkers lockout helps no one. The airlines are flying on one engine. Sears (S: down $4.71 to $32.93, Research, Estimates) warns because, get this, its credit-card operations are lagging. Oh, and it's very likely we're going to war rather soon.

So talk all you like about relative valuations, about the cleansing effect of regulatory reform, and about historical proclivities of certain autumnal months. The fact remains that the business climate is seriously challenged, and unless you've got a window on how it improves you don't have a particularly good grasp on when stocks will move up in a meaningful, lasting way.

Didja catch Wall $treet Week with FORTUNE this weekend? My favorite moment was when co-anchor Karen Gibbs asked Abby Joseph Cohen if she thought Wall Street, at a high level, owed the individual investor an apology. "I don't think that's an appropriate question," shot back the bullish stocks guru. Alrighty then.

Adam Lashinsky is a senior writer for Fortune magazine. Send e-mail to Adam at lashinskysbottomline@yahoo.com.

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