Although there's no doubt of a bullish phase in the US stock markets since 2002-2003, many writers have recently revived the idea that it has been a rather tepid bull and is therefore doomed to failure with a resumption of a secular bear market. The secular bear is said to have started somewhere between 1997 and 2001. Truly the bull has been tepid for long periods of time, at least for large indexes.
StockCharts's Bullish Percentage of SPX stocks demonstrates breadth by individual stock bullish breakouts from point and figure charts as a percent of the 500 SPX stocks. The current weekly version shows the long consolidation or rest from early 2004 to the summer of 2006. The brisk move in BPSPX from the July 2006 has itself made a break of the trendline down from 2004.
The second chart shows the SPX itself with an Elliottt wave labeling of that period from 2004-2006 as a three wave correction. The completed portion is shown as 1 and 2 to this past July, but could be considered to be A and B. The two charts make a convincing argument for a continuing bull market. None of this says there couldn't be a pullback at any time, but a longer bullish phase seems likely.
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