My definition of a bull market is a market with a weekly/monthly higher low and a high velocity of movement which compresses the dips to under 30 points. 10, 20, 10 MACD of at least 8+ required to reduce market range... Slow rallies that are not bull markets are kinda dizzying... Like these last couple months. Who here would prefer a normal high velocity bull market instead of a rising bear market? Me!!! True bull markets only happen after serious capitulations or crashes though. Since the central bankers decided not to let the market properly correct we can't get a true bull market run sadly... It's kinda obvious why most hedge funds are down around 10% already this year... Rising bear markets occur once in a blue moon... Going over the charts I don't think I have ever seen anything like this... Ever. The math of the momentum and cycles is downright bizarre especially over this last month... It was pretty influenced by Merkel and Mario at the right times. Rising bear markets screw with peoples minds because the price action is like a bear market but overall price movement is upward. Anyway... Just ranting about how id so much prefer a true Bull or a Bear rather than a rising bear as I call this market... Everyone is always on edge and ready to panic at a moments notice because of the low momentum. It's not like the steadily rising price action of a high velocity bull. Not the kinda market where you can just comfortably hold long positions... And not the kind of market where you can comfortably swing short tops because well... It's rising slowly. LoL! Btw, there is no weekly higher low by my rules because we needed a weekly higher low after the range break/corrective sequence. Didn't get one.
Being realistic and looking at the reality of the situation... We are not going to see any true bull markets until after the next MAJOR correction/crash. We need to lose a good 300+ points to see a true bull run again. Just gotta trade what the market gives us! Gonna be bear behavior markets probably for a year or so... High velocity bull runs like below are a pipe dream in the near term. But, if we got QE3 at Jackson Hole things might change!!! Wooo...
I was referring to "daily" timeframe bull markets. We have had three in the last four years. If your talking about a yearly bull market... We are merely in a yearly rally cycle for 3-5 years. A true yearly bull market needs to see the SPX above 1600...
Here is a ten minute chart bull market... The higher the MACD goes the shallower the cyclic dips! Interesting how the trading patterns are always about exactly the same no matter what the timeframe... Daily, Weekly, or even 5m, 10m...
Heres what's silly about bull/bear definitions... Daily bull markets are merely weekly/monthly rally cycles. Hmmm... Let me think about this definition some more... What I more mean by "bull market" is a market in which you can just hold position long and watch the money rake in steadily week after week month after month without seeing any drawdowns. To call the entire thing a daily bull market is false because the consolidation cycles are too large. The .com bubble and the 2003-2007 market were closer to true steady bull markets as they didn't dip very much during their rise and had long duration high velocity bull market runs. Wow that monthly chart looks scary. Looks like were on the verge of a major market collapse a couple months out or so... But, I don't trade off a monthly chart so it's just curious we have a identical pattern to the late 2007 highs retest...
You've heard the old saying buy low and sell high? well just it's the same thing in reverse... sell high and buy low. sounds easy don't it. but a bull market as your title implies means that price is going up so you should buy, but if you think price is going down (bear market) then you should sell.