Dow 14000. You can almost see their pluses quicken when the talking heads on the business channels speak about the venerable blue chip index crossing that nice round number. Three months ago they were likewise excitedly jabbering about Dow 13000 and a mere nine months ago it was Dow 12000.

Round numbers like these make nice small talk, but they’re essentially meaningless. They hold no predictive power about the future course for stocks one way or another. However, given that the Dow Industrials have tacked on 25 percent in the past 12 months and it has been more than four years since we’ve had so much as a 10 percent correction here in the U.S, it’s a safe bet we’ll cross Dow 13000 (and quite likely 12000) heading the other way at some point. The question is when?

Absent a shock to the system, major market declines don’t just happen. It takes a recession or an external event, such as the attacks of 9/11, to set off a really big decline. Selloffs of less than 10 percent are another thing all together. These can happen for no apparent and at any time. Accurately predicting these smaller declines, though, isn’t easy.

The best way is to look for divergences within the market. For instance, big advances won’t last if just a few stocks are participating in the move. We’ve seen some signs of this since May, but not enough to set off alarm bells. If the market’s internals continue to deteriorate, we’ll be sure to let you know. For now, we’ll simply remind you that a modest correction isn’t out of the question here.

The Dow 30 isn’t the only nice looking price chart around. Check out the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index Fund. The index is designed to measure equity market performance across the spectrum in the global emerging markets.  The index (and the ETF) is up more than 40 percent in the past year (75 percent in the last two years and 165 percent in the last three years). Such a big move in and of itself doesn’t mean these stocks are headed for a fall, but clearly they’re over extended. Valuations are also getting a bit stretched. For instance, the fund’s holdings are trading at 15 times earnings, nearly 3 times sales and more than 9 times cash flow. Those are fairly high numbers by emerging markets standards.

Again, we’re not looking for a major shakeout, but a decline of 10 percent in the emerging markets is quite possible here.  The NPC’s glass is half full. Another nice round number seen in the financial markets this week was $75. That’s the price traders were willing to pay for a barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude oil, a figure we haven’t seen in about a year.

Last week’s IEA report in which the organization admitted that non-OPEC conventional oil has reached a plateau and that within five years demand for all types of oil will outstrip supply.

This week we got the National Petroleum Council’s take on the situation. The U.S. government appointed Council is largely made up of current and former oil industry execs (who have a vested interest in keeping us hooked on oil). Not surprisingly, their take on the situation is much rosier than the IEA’s outlook, despite the fact that the industry’s reserves have been declining for years and every one of the world’s fields that are producing in excess of a million barrels a day are in decline.

While the Council believes the world can continue to expand its oil supply in the next several decades, it acknowledged that finding supplies to meet the expected 50 percent increase in global demand in the next 25 years will prove difficult. The Council urged the U.S. to adopt a crash program to double automobile fuel efficiency, limit carbon emissions and expand production of bio-fuels and other energy sources or risk serious shortage.

The Council’s final assessment, while a step in the right direction, falls far short of the sort of call we need to galvanize our nation into action.

Keep in mind that crude oil at $75 is still cheap. Our economy can continue to expand at a healthy clip even at much higher prices. There will come a time though when rising energy prices take their toll on the economy, but we’re not there yet.

The first real test will occur later this year if OPEC fails to rescind last year’s production cuts at its September confab. The cartel’s argument that the world is well supplied with oil is wearing thin in the face of today’s prices and sharply rising demand.