The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that after 2-1/2 years of COVID-19, war and surging-then-falling stock prices, we are now back to pretty much where we started. The Globe's Ian McGugan writes that in nominal terms, Canadian and U.S. stock prices hover roughly 10 per cent above where they stood on New Year's Day, 2020. Adjust for inflation and stocks are actually a hair cheaper in real terms than they were before this lunacy started. One way to view this round trip is as a sign that the madness has been shaken out of the market and sanity has been restored after the excesses of the pandemic era. When investors can collect dividend yields of around 6 per cent a year on blue chips like BCE, Bank of Nova Scotia and TC Energy, it seems clear the market is offering some decent value. That may, however, be missing an equally important point. While stocks certainly look a lot more reasonably valued than they did at the start of the year, their fall does not ensure they are now free of problems. Those problems include the lingering impact of the pandemic as well as the uncertain situation in Ukraine and rising interest rates. Governments, corporations and households are struggling to adjust to a new regime.