Nor, he said, would it mean that companies and investors will enjoy the profit growth that they are longing for.

Indeed, regulators and investors enjoy certain advantages over those who were overwhelmed two years ago.

The companies' investors have seldom enjoyed such a robust ride.

Over the last two years, investors have enjoyed price gains as well as high yields.

One reason institutional investors enjoy such an advantage is they have legions of lawyers to identify and process their claims.

One is that investors with stock portfolios enjoyed rising prices from 1982 through the middle of last year.

At the same time, investors who put their money into domestic equity funds enjoyed a 5.58 percent gain, on average.

Many investors who had the courage to go in during 1986, when the oil market hit bottom, are enjoying exceptional distributions this year.

The problem with those gains is that relatively few investors have actually enjoyed them.

But for the most part investors and analysts enjoyed what turned out to be three of the market's best days in years.