If you have held on to your investments over the past couple of years, either through sang froid, inertia or the paralysis of fear, there may be a little cheer this holiday season. Speaking on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” on Dec. 20, Kevin McCormally, Editor of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine, said that now may be a good time to start looking at stocks again. “We think the economy will begin improving by the end of 2009,” he said. “We’re hopeful. Congress has done a lot of work to get the economy moving again. Again, we’re not saying this is a bottom, but we think we’ll look back at this as a pretty good time to buy stocks.”

McCormally may have a point. Most pundits agree that Wall Street is a leading indicator, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average peaked at 14,164 on Oct. 10, 2007. Over the next year it declined, reaching about 11,000 in October 2008, and then plunged, hitting what appears to be a bottom of 7,552 on Nov. 20. It closed on Dec. 26 at about 8,515, and there’s still a long way to go to get back to where we were two years ago. Yet while it may retest its lows, there’s hope that things will go up from here, no matter how fitfully, which may be good news for all of our 401(k)s. And the stock market generally leads the economy by three to six months, so perhaps by February we may see an upswing in business — particularly if the infrastructure projects promised by the incoming administration begin to happen.

An upswing could be aided by decreases in the price of energy. On Dec. 17 the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its Annual Energy Outlook 2009 (AEO2009) reference case, which projects that there will be very little growth in U.S. oil consumption for the next several decades and that, over that period, dependence on foreign sources of energy will decline. Factors behind decreased petroleum demand include the combined effect of recently enacted CAFE standards, requirements for increased use of renewable fuels, and an assumed rebound in oil prices as the world economy recovers.

This may help some companies and hurt others looking to growth in oil consumption to boost sales. But while oil use may stay low, the reference case predicts an increase in U.S. production and consumption of natural gas, reflecting increased availability of resources and higher demand for electric power generation. With growing production of natural gas from unconventional onshore sources, the Outer Continental Shelf, and Alaska, the net import share of total natural gas use is also expected to decline, from 16% in 2007 to less than 3% in 2030.

Reduced energy cost pressure may ease the minds of some manufacturers. Rising energy costs have reached a new level of concern, according to TBM Consulting Group’s sixth annual “Multinational Manufacturing Pulse.” The study polled 1,406 executives from mid-sized to large firms in the U.S., UK, Germany, France, Mexico and Brazil. Fifty-three percent of respondents ranked ‘cost pressures’ as the biggest hurdle to success in the year ahead, and 33% identified rising energy costs as a source of worry. If the EIA projections turn out to be accurate it should help reduce at least one source of worry for U.S. manufacturers.

Some of the other findings from the study were also interesting. When asked how they expected to tackle difficult times, 46% said they were working on improving quality, 45% on shortening lead times, 38% on increasing ways to better connect with customers, and 59% of respondents said they were increasing efforts to eliminate waste.

Peter Cleaveland is a contributing editor to Valve Magazine and ValveMagazine.com. Reach him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .