John Mauldin: The Dark Side of Deficits
Secular Bull and Bear Markets
Market analysts (of which I am a minor variety) talk all the time about secular bull and bear cycles. I argued in this column in 2002 (and later in Bull's Eye Investing) that most market analysts use the wrong metric for analyzing bull and bear cycles.
(For the record, even though I am talking about the US stock market, the principles apply to most markets everywhere. We are all human.)
"Cycles" are defined as events that repeat in a sequence. For there to be a cycle, some condition or situation must recur over a period of time. We are able to observe a wide variety of cycles in our lives: patterns in the weather, the moon, radio waves, etc. Some of the patterns are the result of fundamental factors, while others are more likely coincidence. The phases of the moon occur due to cycles among the moon, the earth, and the sun. In other situations, though, apparent patterns are no more than the alignment of random events into an observable sequence.
All cycles have several components in common. Cycles have a start and an end, they have characteristics that repeat from cycle to cycle, and they often have an explainable cause.
Stock market observers have identified what they believe to be scores of cycles, patterns, correlations, and relationships that have spawned a seemingly endless inventory of predictions and trading schemes. Every trader has his favorite system, well-fortified with back-tested "research" and "facts." These systems all work fine until you begin to use them with real money.
The patterns are so numerous that some market experts discount all theories and acquiesce to a philosophy of randomness (that would be you, Burt!). However, just because we don't understand it, doesn't mean there's not useful information contained within a pattern.
I argue that we should use valuations and not prices as the criterion for determining secular bull and bear cycles. If you use valuations, the cycles jump off the page at you. Using prices, it is very difficult.
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Secular bulls begin with low valuations and continue until valuations get "too high" in terms of P/E ratios. The opposite for secular bears. The average cycle over the last 110 years lasted about 13 years. These are not short-term phenomena.
Within those longer-term secular cycles you can have so-called cyclical swings based on price, and some of those counter-trend cycles can be quite large!
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Related book: Unexpected Returns: Understanding Secular Stock Market Cycles
