By what mechanism are USA stocks doing so well?

[Count Rumford]

"Everyone is out of work back in the USA"?

Seriously?

So the fact that 93 out of every 100 people who wants a job HAS a job was reason enough for you to move half way around the world to a nation where 97 out of every 100 people who wants a job has one?

You must have some serious self-esteem problems (or a serious lack of marketable skills) to feel that way!

US stocks are doing well because the profitability of US companies is at an all-time high, corporations have purged themselves of most employees who lack relevant skills, and so the productivity of the average US worker is at an all-time high...

Stocks will move up & down a little based on "emotion", but the real driving force is the price-to-earnings ratio, which has a natural "sweet spot" for each type of corporation...for the overall Market, that number should be between 15 and 25...

The P/E ratio of the S&P 500 is currently 18.98

The P/E ratio of the Dow Jones is currently 16.81

The broader market has moved up about 33%, so assuming your "small investment" was around $79,000 at the beginning of the year, that return is about average across the Market...2013 brought us several "upward corrections" to illogical downward pressures that had been exerted on the Market (mostly by a belligerent and underactive US Congress)...

So, again, assuming that money is in a 401(k) or IRA, and that you started out with $80K or so, everything is just as one should expect it to be.....now if you started out with $40K, you have done extraordinarily well, or been very, very lucky, and it's probably time to move that money elsewhere to "lock in" your gains!

If you still have a US Social Security number, by the way, it won't matter whether you do or do not "move the money", you will owe the IRS the same amount...

You should also learn that Janus are an INVESTMENT company, and if you lost money it was the underlying stocks in the funds you bought that lost you money, not necessarily Janus themselves...if Merrill Lynch recommended you BUY those funds, I hope you sued them & won!

How long can you expect this to keep going? You can expect the Stock market to continue to rise for as long as human beings like money...