The business section of USA on Friday had a feature article that said the Bull Market is just about over. They basically said 1) we've been in a four year bull markets since Feb 03; 2) bull markets seldom go beyond 4 years; and 3) the current uptrend of 9 months without a significant decline was almost unpecidented. And all that leads to a conclusion that the stock market is going down.

But USA isn't the only one. Steve Sjuggerud (whose 1-2-3 model finally turned from red to yellow light mode in January, signalling stocks will go up) now says we're in for a dismal 7-8 months for stocks Jeff Clark, who writes a trend following report called the Big Trend, also predicts a market downturn. Jeff isn't looking at trends at all. Instead he's looking for highly undervalued stocks that have the potential for a big move and if you look at what he's recommending, their charts look very "anti-trend."

So let's look at this four year bull market. First, it comes what might still be called the early stages of secular bear market in which valuations go down. And during the last four years, the PE ratio of the S&P 500 has actually gone down, confirming the secular bear effect. If this four year rally had come during a secular bull market it probably would have been 2-3 times as big. And this price rally comes during a time period when the dollar has moved down 15%, weakening the overall impact of the upmove. Furthermore, foreign stocks have generally outperformed the S&P500 by a wide margin.

So is the "bull" market over? If USA headlines say its over, then it probably has enough steam to at least last until all of this years pension money has flowed into the market (i.e., until May). Futhermore, I'm having trouble finding many negative efficiency stocks. But that says be long... it doesn't say run for the hills. So in my opinion, we're still in a huge secular bear market, but the current upmove (in which valuations are still going down), could easily continue through May.

But I'm just a psychologist/trading coach. I'm not a market predictor. What do I know.