For America’s roughly 78 million stock players, it was a delightful new year’s greeting from the nation’s largest newspaper. Unfortunately, some market professionals tell me, the greetings are unrealistic.

I refer to a January 2 story in USA Today in which the paper gave its readers a resoundingly bullish preview of the 2007 stock market. Its year-ahead outlook, devoid of any editorial skepticism or the possibility that a buoyant scenario might not come to pass, featured 10 reasons from a variety of Wall Street pros, a number of whom are usually optimistic, why the S&P 500 will set new records.

Although it’s still early, 2007 is hardly adhering to the paper’s happy script. Instead it is kicking off with a less than inspiring yo-yo start.

USA Today is hardly alone among the press in its market enthusiasm. Just flip on the TV set to any business show or turn to the financial pages of a local newspaper to find rampant bullish expectations, with an overwhelming focus on the views of the market bulls and a conspicuous absence of members of the bearish fraternity.

The bulls frequently quoted include such well-known investment strategists as Goldman Sachs’ Abbey Joseph Cohen, Morgan Stanley’s Henry McVey, Prudential Financial’s Ed Keon, and Banc of America’s Tom McManus, some of whom are privately telling clients that they can easily see gains in the major market indexes this year of as much as 15% to 20%.

In contrast, a perceptive veteran Florida financial adviser, Jim Meecham, who plies his trade in such cities as Naples and Boca Raton and whom I recently met while on vacation, takes strong issue with the predominantly rosy sentiment.

It’s not that he’s a bear. Rather, he believes Wall Street’s bullish market roar — which he thinks is spurring an excessive number of ultra-favorable stories on the stock market that ignore potential risks — is highly suspect because it assumes the best of all worlds and leaves little or no margin for error.

Noting that investors are aggressively stepping up their purchases of equity mutual funds ($11.4 billion in the past two weeks alone, about $6 billion of which went into American funds), Mr. Meecham argues that enough uncertainties are still out there to warrant a high degree of caution.

In particular, he points to a bevy of positive factors that he believes investors are factoring in as practically foregone conclusions. Chief among them:

• An economic soft landing (GDP growth this year of between 2% and 3%) is almost a sure thing. Likewise, there will be no hard landing (GDP growth of less than 1.5%) or a recession (two quarters in a row of negative GDP growth).

• Earnings, though slowing, should still turn in respectable 2007 growth in the high single digits or low double digits.

• The housing market is stabilizing, and the industry’s slump should be history by mid-year.

• The Fed will begin reducing interest rates no later than the second or third quarter. Further, inflation will ease to the point where a rate hike this year is out of the question.

• Though more troops are slated to be sent to Iraq over the near term, America’s major involvement in the country is essentially winding down, and most American combat forces will be withdrawn prior to the 2008 election.

• There will be no major spike in oil prices.

• There will be no terrorist attacks this year on American shores.

• International tensions, especially those involving Iran and North Korea, will not get any worse.

• Though Democrats are making a lot of noise following their midterm election gains, no significant legislation that is likely to upset Wall Street will pass in Washington.

• Inflows to American mutual funds, on the wane the past couple of years as investors here flocked to overseas markets with superior returns, should rebound strongly.

To assume that most of these factors will work out positively for Wall Street is assuming much too much, Mr. Meecham says. “It makes a lot more sense to me,” he adds, “that investors should give some very careful thought to Murphy’s law — namely, if anything can go wrong, it will.”

He doesn’t say it in so many words, but his bottom line seems clear: Wall Street may look back nostalgically at those big 2006 bonuses and say, “Those were the days.”

dandordan@aol.com