The combination of the extremely powerful 1982 - 2000 bull market accompanied by a senseless financial mania was the recipe for
the start of the secular bear market we envisioned.
Not exact matches
An immediate decline
of fifty percent would have been required to correct the excesses and to reach a typical
secular bear start.
However, after enormous bailouts
of the largest financial institutions in the country, as well as the auto industry, and even more monetary ease than in 2003 (accompanied by TARP, the stimulus plan, QE, and QE2); we
started another cyclical bull market within the
secular bear market.
When the adverse inflation - rate trend reaches its nadir, we will mark the end
of this
secular bear and the
start of the next
secular bull.
The counter to that is that this is merely a cyclical bull market in the context
of the
secular bear market that
started in 2000.
In the introduction to the last Bull
Bear Market Report, I further developed the thesis that an impulsive equities bull market began in November 2012: Most analysts continue to make the mistake
of believing that a
secular bull market
started in March
of 2009.
But in the
secular bear cycles investing is a difficult task and one that at the end
of the day may find you distressingly close to where you
started.
The setting is an elaborately conceived afterlife called Elsewhere, a distinctly
secular island realm
of surprising physical solidity (no cottony clouds or pearly gates here), where the dead exist much as they once did — except that no one dies or is
born, and aging occurs in reverse, culminating when the departed are returned to Earth as infants to
start the life cycle again.
From that standpoint, there's no chance that the 2009 low was the beginning
of a
secular bull, both because valuations weren't nearly low enough (prospective 10 - year returns briefly exceeded 10 % annually, but were nowhere close to those accompanying the beginning
of previous
secular bulls), and also because at present, valuations are already about the point where one would look for a
secular bear to
start.
Runs a1 to a8 on my Simplified Retirement Trainer A
start with today's valuations P / E10 = 27.2 and today's TIPS interest rate
of 2.2 % while in a long lasting (
secular)
Bear Market.
It may seem implausible that stocks could have gone this long with near - zero returns, and yet still be at valuations where other
secular bear markets have
started — but that is the unfortunate result
of the extreme valuations that stocks achieved in 2000.
A TIPS - only baseline is a great
starting point in the early years
of a long lasting (
secular)
bear market.
One set
of sequences
starts at today's valuations (P / E = 27.3) and a
secular (long lasting)
Bear Market.