2022- Lowry's Published Views

The S&P 500 set its all-time high on January 3, 2022 (4796.56) just before descending into its worst bear market (25.43% as of October 12, 2022, the lowest point to date) since the Covid crisis of 2020 (33.93%). However, bear markets are more than just price declines exceeding the (arbitrary) level of 20%. They are characterized by the grinding down of hope over a longer period of time, and the 2022 decline, again through its lowest low as of the date of this report, was 40 weeks. The decline in 2020 was only six weeks. The Financial Crisis bear market took 73 weeks, and the Dot Com bear market took 110-144 weeks, depending on how it was measured and the index used. Historically, the average over all major declines since 1929 was roughly 77 weeks.