What might derail the market's rise?

ONE question that stock market players must be asking themselves is: When will the party end? Or rather, perhaps, what might cause the party to end?

The most obvious answer, of course, is that all the money printing fails to work, leading to rampant inflation and forcing interest rates upwards. This was what happened in early 1994 when an inflation-wary US Federal Reserve unexpectedly raised its federal funds rate, derailing what was then a happily charging bull market that had, at that point, run non-stop for about five months.

The Fed of today, however, is a different beast altogether. Having contributed to the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 by falling asleep at the regulatory wheel for most of the 10 years leading up to Lehman Brothers' collapse, the US central bank is now bending over backwards to try and redeem itself. So investors needn't worry - interest rates aren't going to rise anytime soon and if anything, the Fed probably isn't done with its money printing yet.

Still, as last week's news of a surprising 2012 fourth-quarter GDP contraction of the US economy shows, things are by no means rosy. Investment firm Neuberger Berman, in a report last week titled " What's Ahead for US Growth" , said that the GDP drop appears to validate the opinions expressed in a recent Wall Street Journal poll which found that about 60 per cent of the public continues to think that the country is headed down the wrong track.