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With all of the talk of recession speculation, declining consumer confidence, mounting credit worries, and a slumping housing market, it's good to know there are still a few glass-half-full types out there. And in recent days, they've found plenty of traction for their optimism.
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Investors jumped at the news this morning from the Commerce Department that January retail sales rose 0.3 percent. It may sound like a minor increase, but economists had everyone bracing for a drop in sales of 0.3 percent. January's rosy numbers were driven by increased spending on cars, clothes, and gasoline.

The translation is that it's not over until the consumer stays home. "As the consumer goes, so goes the economy," said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors told the Associated Press. "It appears the consumer may have slowed down, but not left the field of battle."

While that burst of optimism may last for just the short term, others remain bullish even farther out on the horizon.

In a report published yesterday, Morningstar analyst Jeffrey Ptak predicted that the Dow Jones industrial average will rise to 18,500 in the next three years—more than 6,000 points from where it trades today, or about 17 percent annualized returns including dividends.

Morningstar's analysis doesn't include any macroeconomic factors—no consideration of interest rates, trade deficits, currency weakness, or credit turmoil. It's based entirely on what its analysts have determined is the "fair value estimate" of each of the 30 Dow components. The changes made to the index earlier this week only bolster his analysis.

The Financial Times, meanwhile, informally polled corner-office suites in some of America's biggest corporations and concluded that C.E.O.'s aren't letting the economic Debbie Downers slow them down. "When it comes to the health of the world’s largest economy, it appears that economists are from Mars and businesspeople are from Venus," its reporters write.

Large multinational corporations like General Electric, Kraft, and Procter & Gamble remain optimistic on the global front, even if the U.S. economy experiences a slowdown.

Even many small-business owners remain bullish. "Recession, schmecession. That’s what most small-business owners appear to be saying about the economic storm clouds," Michael Alter, president of payroll company SurePayroll, told the F.T. "Our data indicate that the news of the demise of the economy has been greatly exaggerated."

And as if that's not enough to sway even the most bearish analysts out there, there's always the Sports Illustrated swimsuit-issue indicator.

The number crunchers over at Bespoke Investment Group tried hard to find a connection between the nationality of the issue's cover model and the direction of the stock market, and they managed to reach an optimistic conclusion.

The S&P 500 index averaged a gain of 13.9 percent in the years that an American donned the cover, which happened again this year. When international models were picked, the index gained only 7.2 percent on average.

Of course, if S.I.'s editors really want to see the bulls come roaring back, perhaps next year they should start scouring Germany. A German graced the cover of the swimsuit issue only once, in 1998, when the S&P soared 26.7 percent.

Copyright © 2008. Conde Nast Portfolio.com