Wall Street was a terrifying place to trick-or-treat last year, unless you knocked on the door of the U.S. Treasury after dressing up as an impoverished banker, insurance company or carmaker who was too big to fail.

Twelve months later and seven months into an impressive stock market rally, venturing out this Halloween season isn't quite the frightful experience for investors it was a year ago.

Still, plenty of investors remain apprehensive. Mutual fund powerhouse Vanguard reports that about half of the 3,000 investors it surveyed believe that the stock market is a more dangerous place to invest than it has been in the past.

Bob Doll, BlackRock's global chief investment officer of equities, finds nothing too alarming in the market heading into fright night. While the declining U.S. dollar could pose some issues, "we believe any sort of currency crisis would be unlikely," he told clients in a report last week. And although a stock market correction could happen at any moment, Mr. Doll believes that it most likely would be short and shallow.

"The abundance of cash on the sidelines suggests to us that many investors would view a pullback as an opportune time to reinvest," he wrote.

Mr. Doll is more sanguine about the current state of affairs than Carol R. Miller, a senior portfolio manager at Federated Investors. She's apprehensive about the American consumer's debt load, whether it was incurred buying a 52-inch television on plastic or a car on the five-year installment plan.

"As consumers continue to be weighed down by debt in the face of stagnant wages, rising unemployment and increasing mortgage delinquencies, it's hard to imagine them lifting the economy and carrying the market in a sustainable fashion," Ms. Miller said.

Debt also concerns Hefren-Tillotson chief investment officer Donald Belt. Consumers, corporations and government agencies are burdened by $53 trillion in debt, nearly four times America's gross domestic product, he said.

"Historically high debt levels have challenged economic growth. We saw that in the '30s with the Depression. We saw that with Japan in the '90s, and it's still going on today," he said.

Mr. Belt said the large role the government has assumed in responding to the credit crisis increases the risks of a policy mistake by the Federal Reserve. If the Fed tightens credit too prematurely, it could stall the recovery and reignite the fears of debt-driven deflation that circulated last year, he said. Keeping interest rates too low for too long could cause problems for the U.S. dollar and spur another asset bubble, Mr. Belt said. The housing bubble occurred in part because the Fed kept rates low to stimulate the economy after the tech stock bubble burst, he said.

If a bubble develops, Mr. Belt said two likely suspects will be emerging markets and commodities, two stellar performers in the recent market rally.

Malcolm Polley, chief investment officer of Stewart Capital Advisors, is spooked by the market's impressive recovery from its March lows.

"Investors may have gotten a little too euphoric given the speed with which markets have snapped back, particularly when the economic data and earnings data hasn't improved in a similar fashion. It's getting better, but not getting better as rapidly as the market would like you to believe," Mr. Polley said.

Investment adviser Robert Fragasso of the Fragasso Group is not worried about too much, including government spending or inflation. But he believes that some caution is in order when it comes to how Washington spends our money.

"My concern is that we spend it productively, not frivolously," he said. "Are we going to be responsible adults about this, or are we going to spend it like we went into a candy store?"

Mr. Fragasso noted that as massive as federal budget deficits are today, they were about 120 percent of GDP at the end of World War II, when Washington undertook two major deficit-spending projects: the Marshall Plan and building the federal highway network. Those were productive investments that stimulated the economy without igniting inflation, he said. A comparable project today would be rebuilding the nation's inefficient electrical grid, he said.

Small companies' limited access to credit concerns Charlie Smith, chief investment officer of Fort Pitt Capital Group in Green Tree. Banks will be in a better position to provide that credit once they earn their way to better balance sheets, but that will take time, Mr. Smith said.

"I just don't know how much higher the unemployment rate will go before we get there," he said. "We haven't seen any real lifeline for small business, and that's what drives hiring."

Stephen P. Wood, chief market strategist for Russell Investments, says baby boomers should be scared about how much longer they'll have to work and how much more they'll have to save based on their depleted retirement portfolios and lengthening life expectancies.

"Seventy years ago, people didn't retire and have 20 years of fun," said Dr. Wood.

Baby boomers also should be prepared for a lower return environment, where the consequences of their mistakes will be magnified, he cautioned.

"Don't risk making big mistakes. The relative cost of a big mistake has gone up a lot," he said.

"Money Q&A" and "Company Town" are featured exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.