Yes, foreign revenues are a key driver, but it is not necessarily American shareholders who are moving in to take advantage of them. American stocks are themselves a genuinely global product. They are bought and sold worldwide.

BUT they are priced in dollars.

When the dollar falls, they become cheaper in international currency. Assuming a much deeper fall in the dollar is seen as unlikely, someone holding Euro can simply buy more stock at the same Euro price after the dollar dips.

Yet, when foreign investors move to do this, the price of stocks is bid up, and the market rises.

Quite right. This whole thing about the market telling us in advance how the economy will do is pretty bogus now. Multi-nationals are having good profits from conversion rates b/c the dollar keeps going down.

What people don't realize is that many parts of the world are already out of the recession. We're one of the last to come out where in the past, we pulled the world out of recessions. This is not a good sign. With consumer spend dropping as a percentage of GDP, where does the growth come from, gov't? Yeah, that'll work.