What exactly is a bull and bear market anyway? Said Hirsch: "That's part of the elusive nature of calling the bear and bull market. Everyone has different definitions of it." Quote from: http://www.lockeygroup.com/news-6_1_03.php Charles
I agree completely. I find these 20% definitions (of both bull and bear) hilarious ... if accepted as good benchmarks then a bull markets began in Sept 2001. And then there's all the extra bull markets in the Nasdaq, beginning in May 2000, etc.
The biggest bolus of boomers in the US were born 1948 to 1953 according to social security stats. I don't think they will retire at 60 either, many people had their retirement set back because of the recent downturn over the last couple of years. I'd say that many will retire at 67 or even 70. That would put the middle of the retirement of those people at 2018 or so. Now, how the stocks are distributed among them I don't know. The richer ones may have a disproportionate share and also retire earlier but they aren't the ones that have to sell, they can make if off of dividends. Perhaps first the richest ones will retire and perhaps they will stop buying but they won't sell much either. That may not have much effect. When the middle class guys retire they will have slowed down their buying perhaps 5 years before and they will be selling perhaps, to support themselves in retirement. I guess maybe buying will slow starting about 2012 and selling will commence about 2018. Until then I'm hoping to cash in bigtime. Max
After today's action I don't think we ever had a bear market, just a blase, slowmotion mini-correction...because from what I know about bear markets it takes quite some time (yrs) to renew an appetite for playing again. And clearly that's not the case anymore. Took 3 years for stocks to go down, but they get up real fast. Looks like the tone has been set for 2004! Best, David
Remember what happened to bonds in June/July of 2003. I hate to make market calls - but this is very likely to have an UGLY ending.
I don't think the prior post was intended to minimize the possibility of a future decline, but rather to suggest that the bear market that everyone thought was so bad really wasn't that significant because smallcaps, midcaps, equal-weight S&P 500 are now at all-time highs and there never really was prolonged excessive bearishness which is often typical of major bear markets.