Financial historian and NYU Stern School of Business Professor Richard Sylla — who in the late 90s predicted that the next decade would be a weak one for stock returns — says history shows the market is likely to make some nice gains in the coming decade. “People ought to take a longer view and think in terms of years and even decades,” Sylla, whose predictions are based on analyzing 200-plus years of decade-by-decade performance of stocks, tells The Wall Street Journal. “Most people are quite pessimistic right now. I am saying: The market may go down from here. It may go up. But if you look at the long sweep of history, this seems like a good time to buy because the average return is down near the bottom” and is likely to go up. “I think the outlook is pretty good for long term,” he says, calling stocks “relatively cheap” at current price levels. “I think long-term investors maybe should be accumulating stocks now, and they’ll probably be pretty happy ten years from now.”