should be since it’s not an over-inflated market?
Pure speculation I realize but an overall opinion is all I'm seeking here.
Not necessarily. A company's stock price (assuming the market values it correctly) is based to a large extent around expectation of its future earnings.
The price may be low by historical measures, however this might be because its future earnings will be lower due to high interest costs, reduced demand or sale price for their product (eg due to global recession), high price of raw materials etc.
There are many situations where stock prices could be incorrectly valued, eg due to investor panic (emotion), excessive selling due to margin calls, excessive short selling by hedge funds, and so on. However as soon as investors generally realise this is the case, the bargain hunters will move in. You will have seen big downward trends in share prices that suddenly recovered – at these specific times you could say the market was undervalued.
The movement of the Dow relative to the long term moving average is also a strong clue – the market usually reverts to its long term average at some point. If it is far below the long term average, although you couldn't directly say it was 'undervalued', it is highly likely that the prices will rise at some point in the future towards the average trend line.
Is the market undervalued now? My personal guess is that it is valued about right, looking at the depth of previous recessions. If you want to know whether investing now is a good idea, realistically the market could still go lower, but over the long term, (3 to 5 years + ) most people would expect to see a good recovery in share prices.
(However some companies that you may consider 'cheap' will go bust before this recession is out. . .in these cases you will lose most of the money you invest)