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Strategies & Market Trends : Stock Attack -- A Complete Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KM who wrote (23699)	5/28/2000 11:43:00 AM
From: donald sew	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42787

KM, Thanks for your comments. I would like to go into a bit more concerning whether this is or is not THE BOTTOM, or whether a bear market has started. Firstly, I mainly hear from the media how much the market is down for the year, and less as to how much the market is down off of its all-time highs. I wonder if that is because they want to paint a not-so-ugly picture. The following are how much the market if off for the year and off of the ALL-TIME highs, respectively: DOW - 10.4% & 12.4% SPX - 6.9% & 11.3% NAZ - 21.5% & 37.6% It is commonly accepted, and some even call it the text book definition, that a bear market is a decline of over 20% and a CORRECTION is a decline of about 10%. I feel that most/media are paying most of the attention to the NAZ which ran up so hard, but has also come down so hard. Its fair to say that the NAZ is in a BEAR PHASE. However the DOW and SPX are still only in CORRECTIVE PHASES, if one accepts the above definition of a BEAR MARKET. Frankly, I feel that the above definition of a BEAR MARKET is somewhat lacking. My definition of a BEAR MARKET takes on 2 elements, that of AMOUNT of DECLINE and amount of time for recovery. In the strong BEAR MARKETs, the initial decline is strong and fast and are in the 40%+ range and just as important they take approximately 10-15 years to recover. The 1929 bear market didnt recover until the 1940's and the 1970's bear market didnt recover until the early 1980's. The JAPAN BEAR MARKET took about 70% off of the Japanese market which started around 1990 and still has not fully recovered. These are what I call TRUE BEAR MARKETS - declines of greater than 40% with years for recovery. I have also heard several times from those with experience that once the majority accepts that it is a BEAR MARKET, the market is already near the lows. My position is that I will not turn strongly bearish until the SPX breaks below 1340, and that right now the overall market is only in a correction, regardless of the losses in the NAZ. Even if the SPX does drop below 1340, I don't know if a TRUE BIG BEAR MARKET is in the works. The are many who are saying that a TRUE BIG BEAR MARKET will not/cannot occur for one reason or another, and they could be right. My point is whether it is a good time to say for sure that we are at or near a bottom. Again - I DON'T KNOW. I am only making a general comment for the overall market and not focusing on individual issues, since even in a true bear market there are still some stocks that will head up - just not many. So in line with my previous post. Is this really the best time to hold onto a strong position that the market is at/near THE BOTTOM, and trade/invest aggressively to the upside in order to regain what was lost, at least on paper. I would also like to remind all that identifying THE BOTTOM in a downtrend is probably as hard as identiying THE TOP in an uptrend, as many witnessed during the strong bull run since 1995. My position still remains - I DON'T KNOW if this is the beginning of a TRUE BEAR MARKET. My advice is to minimize the GREED FACTOR and be conservative with ones opinion to the extent that one admits to themselves that they could be wrong. seeya