Indeed, the spread between the decline in corporate prices and the basicallystable consumer prices in the 1995-2005 period was a boon for corporate profits.
So then think of stocks that are in basicallystable and strong fields, with a defined franchise, that have been beaten up in the bear market and likely overly so.
They knew enough to understand how hard they could push without breaking things (the rate of return they demanded would soon ossify into a ritualized expectation of stable growth rates, a big enabler of the rise of a middle class that could basically withdraw from the risk frontier).