Defining Bull and Bear Markets

Oct. 10, 2024 - A Wealth of Common Sense

There are some loosely accepted definitions but you have secular bull and bear markets as well as cyclical bull and bear markets. Here’s the bull market table:And the bear markets:You can see there are plenty of both bull and bear markets.

Take a look at my version of secular bull and bear markets:So while there are 20+ cyclical bull and bear markets over the past 100 years or so, there have really only been six secular longer-term periods. The extended secular bull market from 1942-1965 is a good example of why you can’t call an end to a long-term bull market just because stocks were in a technical bear market.

The one big difference between the current run and previous versions is that this secular bull market started at the very bottom of an earth-shattering bear market, which wasn’t the case in previous bull runs...