Are we facing a stock market bubble?

The explosion of equity prices since 1995 has led some analysts to conclude we are facing an asset bubble in the stock market. In the period February 1995 - July 1997 the Dow-Jones index doubled from 4000 to 8000; in the period November 1995 - May 1999, the Dow doubled from 5000 to 10,000. Overall equity prices in the four years 1995-1998 grew at the amazing and spectacular annual rate of 28%. The stock market returns in the latter half of the 1990s are significantly higher than the average and among the highest ever recorded. (See Table 1 and Table 2)