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Here's a chart I made that I think may be helpful in explaining the current market to new investors.

This chart shows the trailing four-quarter sales and earnings for the S&P 500. This needs a little explanation. The black line is the sales for the S&P 500 and it follows the right axis. The blue line represents the operating earnings and the red is the as-reported earnings. Both of those lines follow the left axis. Notice that sales are much less volatile than profits.

I've scaled the two axes at a ratio of 12-to-1, which means whenever the red or blue line crosses the black line, the profit margin is exactly 8.33%. Unfortunately, the data only goes up to the first quarter of this year,...