Financial historian Richard Sylla: Better days lie ahead

As stocks plunged last week, investors focused on the risk of recession and another market collapse.

Richard Sylla sees something very different over the longer term: the much-longer term.

Prof. Sylla is a financial historian at New York University's Stern School of Business, studying market behavior all the way back to 1790. By analyzing patterns detected years ago with two colleagues, he accurately predicted in 2000 the decade of overall declines that haunted investors.

Now, Prof. Sylla has made a new forecast at the request of The Wall Street Journal. Better days lie ahead, he says.