Now how is that for all you PERMA bulls, the bull NEVER LEFT.....got to love the stock market, free money to all..... The bull never left' Commentary: Russell now says bull market that began in early 1980s still alive By Mark Hulbert, MarketWatch Last update: 12:01 a.m. EDT April 9, 2008 ANNANDALE, Va. (MarketWatch) -- News flash: The 2000-2002 bear market never happened. And the 2007-2008 bear market was a figment of your imagination. Believe it or not, those announcements in effect were made earlier this week by Richard Russell, editor of the Dow Theory Letters newsletter. He says he now believes the stock market has been in a primary bull market since the early 1980s. The lows of October 2002 and January 2008 therefore represent nothing more than "important secondary or cyclical correction-bottoms." As if he wanted to make sure there was no misunderstanding, Russell headlined his Web posting Monday night: "A Shocking Revelation: The Bull Never Left." What factors could lead to such a dramatic change of heart in an adviser who earlier this year had argued that we were in a primary bear market? The first, according to Russell, is that "the major stock averages have been building huge bases," and therefore appear ready to move much higher -- to new all-time highs, in fact. The second factor is that, at the market's low earlier this year, just as was the case at the October 2002 bottom, stocks were not even close to being as cheap as they were at the major bear market bottoms of the past. Given these two factors, Russell says he sees "no other explanation" for what's been going on than that we've been in an uninterrupted bull market since the early 1980s. What would a major bear market bottom look like? Don't ask ... "Somewhere ahead we're finally going to enter a true primary bear market, maybe one of the greatest and most tragic in history," Russell writes. "That future bear market will end with something we haven't seen since the 1980 to 1982 period, and I'm talking about great values in stocks. And when I say great values I'm talking about blue-chip stocks selling in single-digit price/earning ratios while at the same time providing dividend yields of 6-7-8%, the kind of yields we last saw at the lows of the early 1980s." How soon will the stock market recover its losses of the past six months and reach new all-time highs? Russell's crystal ball is less clear in answering this question; he simply writes that it will happen "somewhere between 2008 and 2010." In the meantime, he is advising clients to buy the Dow Diamonds ETF, with stop losses 6% below the purchase price. Why is Russell's opinion worth listening to? Because his stock market timing record is one of the best of any that the Hulbert Financial Digest has been tracking over the last three decades. To be sure, Russell's short-term market timing has left something to be desired in recent years. But when it comes to calling major turns in the market, Russell has some spectacular calls to his credit. One of the most famous was his buy signal that came very close to the bottom of the great 1973-74 bear market. See March 31, 2003 Peter Brimelow column Another was a sell signal in late August 1987, five days after the stock market's high that summer and two months prior to the 1987 crash, the worst in U.S. stock-market history. End of Story