In the long run ... Commentary: This might be first genuine bear market in three decades

ANNANDALE, Va. (MarketWatch) -- Lots of attention was paid, going into Monday's trading session, to the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.

Would it join the Dow Jones Industrial Average in breaking to new bear-market lows, lower than the Nov. 20 level that up until recently had marked the low point of the bear market that began in October 2007?

As fate would have it, of course, it was not even close. By the close of trading, the S&P 500 was more than nine points below its Nov. 20 closing low.

That's depressing enough news, of course.

But by focusing on whether the Nov. 20 lows would be broken, investors may have overlooked something else that happened Monday that is even more momentous from a longer-term point of view: The Dow broke below its closing low of the 2000-02 bear market; the S&P 500 had achieved that dubious feat last Friday.

Technicians will no doubt endlessly debate the meaning of this in coming days. But one intriguing consequence of the 2002 lows' being broken is that the stock market's decline between 2000 and 2002 begins to appear less and less as a bear market and more as a mere correction within a great bull market that began in the early 1980s.

According to this retelling, that bull market lasted 25 years and did not finally end until October 2007.

What difference does it make how we retell the story of what has passed? In one sense, of course, it makes no difference. After all, regardless of what you call it, the stock market fell some 40% between 2000 and 2002.

But, in another sense, this retelling of history carries great significance, since it reveals a lot about the bear market we're suffering through right now. According to some technical analysts, prominently including Richard Russell, editor of Dow Theory Letters, a major bear market can be expected to obliterate between one-half and two-thirds of the previous advance.

I'll do the math for you: We've already erased around half of the bull market that began in 1982. A two-thirds retrenchment would take the Dow down to around the 5,200 mark.

By the way, this sobering retelling of the stock market's history over the last three decades isn't something that technicians are cooking up only now, after the stock market has already declined by 50%.

Russell outlined just such a possibility nearly a year ago, in April 2008, when the Dow was trading at relatively lofty levels around 12,600. In entertaining the notion that the 2000-02 bear market was actually a mere correction within an ongoing bull market, Russell wrote: "Somewhere ahead we're finally going to enter a true primary bear market, maybe one of the greatest and most tragic in history. That future bear market will end with something we haven't seen since the 1980 to 1982 period, and I'm talking about great values in stocks. And when I say great values I'm talking about blue-chip stocks selling in single-digit price/earning ratios while at the same time providing dividend yields of 6-7-8%, the kind of yields we last saw at the lows of the early 1980s."

The bottom line? On this retelling, we should have expected the bear market that follows an unprecedented bull market would be just as momentous.

In other words, we should not have been surprised.

Mark Hulbert is the founder of Hulbert Financial Digest in Annandale, Va. He has been tracking the advice of more than 160 financial newsletters since 1980.
*Courtesy of MarketWatch

An historical walk down Wall Street, Commentary: Analogy with the 1930s doesn't have to spell doom

ANNANDALE, Va. (MarketWatch) -- It's become fashionable in recent months to look to the 1930s for an analogy to what we're suffering through today.

But how many of the commentators who so blithely throw the comparison around have actually analyzed what it would really mean to play out that decade's script?

I think you know the answer.

So, for this column, I decided to take that analogy seriously. And, not surprisingly, I found that it presents a very depressing portrait of what might lie ahead. If we think we've had it bad so far -- and we have -- we haven't seen anything yet.

Believe it or not, however, I also found some good news.

That, at least, is the conclusion to emerge from a recent interview with Jeremy Siegel, the Wharton finance professor and author of the classic investment book, "Stocks for the Long Run."

To locate the date during the 1930s that is most analogous to today, Siegel looked for the point at which the stock market after 1929 had -- as is the case today -- declined by half. He relied on a stock-market benchmark that he has calculated which takes dividends into account and also adjusts for inflation.

This point of 50% decline came very early in the Great Depression, according to Siegel -- at the end of 1930, in fact. As in the current bear market, that initial point of 50% decline came just 16 months after the August 1929 stock-market top.

But the bear market had only barely begun at that point. Over just the next five months, according to Siegel, on an inflation-adjusted total return basis, the stock market fell an additional 60%.

You read that right: That's a 60% drop on top of a 50% drop -- or should I say "on bottom of ..."?

If the stock market today were to suffer a further decline of similar magnitude, the Dow Jones Industrial Average would be trading below the 3,000 level by the end of July.

To this extent, therefore, we had better hope that the analogy with the 1930s doesn't hold.

The news isn't all bad, however. That's because, according to Siegel, the stock market quickly recovered from its 60% plunge in early 1931 -- within two years, in fact. By June 1933, the market was actually ahead of where it had stood at the end of 1930.

Furthermore, over the five years beginning at the end of 1930, the stock market, on an inflation-adjusted total-return basis, produced a 7% annualized return -- notwithstanding the 60% drop in the first five months of that five-year period.

In other words, even if you had been so unlucky as to buy stocks right before a six-month decline of 60%, you would have been whole again within just two years and would have earned a 7% real return over the next five years.

Few investors would object to that outcome today, of course. A 7% real return over the next five years sounds awfully attractive, in fact. And, yet, assuming the analogy with the 1930s holds up, that is what will happen between now and February 2014.

Of course, there's no way of knowing whether we're really playing out a 1930s script. And even if we are so unlucky as to endure a 60% drop over the next five months, there are no guarantees that the market will recover as quickly as it did following the first half of 1931.

Nevertheless, insofar as we choose to compare the current bear market and the Great Depression, we owe it to ourselves to carefully analyze what that analogy holds. And, as awful as that analogy is, it also contains some welcome and surprising silver linings.

Mark Hulbert is the founder of Hulbert Financial Digest in Annandale, Va. He has been tracking the advice of more than 160 financial newsletters since 1980.
*Courtesy of MarketWatch

DowJones 60m.chart (24.02.2009)

*DJ rebound - its about time because of the BULLDIV from RSI & Chart and Bernanke mention all this will end by year end (he can see the future, good good) hahaha, but Bursa move ahead of the rest of the world yesterday. Now trick question, DJ follow Bursa ka?? hehe

AIG - Chart & Put

*congrats to all my friends that making good USD... very good PUT decision to all you guys make last October/November. Regret i tada follow you guys....

PUT OPTIONS

Expire at close Fri, May 15, 2009

Strike		Last	Chg	Bid	Ask	Vol	Open Int
3.00		2.50	0.00	2.54	2.68	223	2,980
4.00		3.50	0.00	3.50	3.70	10	1,234
5.00		4.50	0.00	4.50	4.70	10	1,380
6.00		4.40	0.00	5.50	5.70	5	174
7.00		5.40	0.00	6.50	6.70	10	1
8.00		6.56	0.00	7.50	7.70	12	70
10.00		8.60	0.00	9.50	9.70	36	47
15.00		13.55	0.00	14.50	14.70	5	12

Stocks jump after Bernanke says recession may end

Stocks jump after Bernanke tells Congress recession might end this year

NEW YORK (AP) -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has given Wall Street a double dose of reassurance. Bernanke has told Congress the recession might end this year, and that regulators aren't planning to nationalize banks. The news alleviated some of investors' worries about the economy and the banking system, and lifted the Dow Jones industrial average and Standard & Poor's 500 index off their lowest levels since 1997.

AP - Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2009, before the ...">

AP - Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2009, before the ...

Analysts said the market was also hoping that President Barack Obama, who speaks to the nation Tuesday night, will offer details about his plans to help stabilize the financial system.

The Dow is up 236 points at 7,350, while the S&P 500 index is up 29 at 773. The Nasdaq composite index is up 54 at 1,441.

Advancing issues are ahead of losers by 5 to 1 on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume came to 1.84 billion shares.

*Courtesy of Yahoo! Finance

>> Now we wait and see whether Bernanke prediction going to happen by year end or not. Hehehehe, now looks like prediction between Greenspan vs Bernanke ???