Hi SbH, Zeev & all - nothing too profound, but this article from Bloomberg seems to offer an alternative worldview :)
bloomberg.com
[the following excerpt is used for academic purposes only]
Bull, Bear Markets Becoming Extinct
By Chet Currier
(Commentary. Chet Currier is a Bloomberg News columnist.
His opinions are his own.)
New York, July 31 (Bloomberg) -- Put the bull out to pasture.
Send the bear back to the woods.
Bull and bear markets -- the traditional terms investors use to
classify broad rising and falling trends in security prices --
don't happen the way they used to any more. Today
stock-price trends most often occur in fragmented patterns
within the market, as individual stocks and groups of stocks go
their own very different ways.
You still get dramatic gains and losses, such as the Nasdaq
Composite Index's 37 percent drop between March 10 and
May 23 this year. But note that the Standard & Poor's 500
Index lost only 1.3 percent over that same stretch.
Or look back to the fourth quarter of 1999, when the Nasdaq
composite gained 48 percent while the S&P 500 posted a
much smaller 15 percent return.
``I'm not sure everyone agrees what 'the market' is any more,''
said Michael Sapir, chief executive of ProFund Advisors LLC
in Bethesda, Maryland, which manages $2.6 billion in 27
mutual funds. ``It's a lot more complicated than it used to be.''
This doesn't have to present a big problem for long-term
investors. It only reinforces the already persuasive argument
for patient, diversified investing. Still, it's a sign worth every
investor's attention of basic changes in how the investment
game is played.
On either the way up or the way down, stocks are less and less
prone to following parallel courses. One reason for this: Most
fund managers and other professionals, following a continuous
``fully invested'' philosophy, now move money from one area of
the market to another, rather than into and out of stocks
altogether...
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