Experts are divided The analysts said receding fears about a crisis in Europe had lifted investor sentiment. They added that companies across the globe are in fine health and have recovered from the Western world's financial crisis. A pickup in indicators pointing to an improving UK economy will also drive investors to shares, the bank said. The FTSE 100 has recovered strongly since the financial crisis. Between Lehmans' collapse and March 2009 the FTSE fell by another 1500 points to just above 3500. However, not all investors are confident the FTSE 100 will reach 8000 by the end of next year. One of the City's most respected fund managers, Neil Woodford, expects stock markets to suffer a slowdown in the coming months. He expects investors to pull money out of the market as the US starts to rein in its aggressive quantitative easing policy. Where will the FTSE 100 be at the end of next year? Valuing whether the stock market is fair value can be done in a number of ways. Most commonly, the value of the index is compared to the earnings of the companies within it, to give an indication, known as the price to earnings ratio. The lower the price, the cheaper the market. Using this method, the stocks that make up the FTSE 100 now look less attractive than at the start of the year - the p/e ratio is now 19, compared with 15 in January. To put that in context, the ratio's highest level was 30.5, reached in January 2000, at the peak 6930 peak of the market. The main US index in contrast, the S&P500, is slightly cheaper at 17 and German shares are at 18. Another measure is to use "book value," what you'd get by selling all the assets of companies and deducting their debts and liabilities. Again, the lower, the better. The FTSE 100 book value ius 1.88, according to Bloomberg, which is more expensive than Germany (1.65) but cheaper than the US (2.5).