Identifying Bear Market Bottoms and New Bull Markets

Ask one hundred investors whether this is a bull market or a bear market, and you are likely to find their opinions split evenly down the middle. No one is really certain that the September 2001 low marked the end of the bear market and the start of a new bull market. But, this uncertainty is nothing new. As long as stock exchanges have existed, analysts and investors have always placed heavy emphasis on the difficult task of identifying the primary trend of the stock market. Everyone’s ideal market strategy is, at least in theory, to avoid the ravages of each bear market, and then to move aggressively into stocks after each important market bottom.