Indeed, it s his market analysis work that brings him to a conclusion we re not in a bear market. A bear market, according to the rulebook, is a period when stock prices decline by 20 percent or more in a year. By that measure we re well into a bear market. The Standard and Poor s 500 Index has been off by more than 20 percent for weeks. Literal trillions in market value have been lost.
Happy investors are an endangered species.
Writing to institutional clients in mid-March, he described what we re in as the 80 percent Bull Market , demonstrating that losses were almost entirely in the technology sector. The other 80 percent is doing well. So well, in fact, that 9 of the 11 sectors in the Standard and Poor s 500 index have shown gains over the last 12 months. If you were a mutual fund investor, for instance, this means you did poorly if you were in the aggressive growth funds that tend to have big technology commitments. But you did relatively well if you were in conservative value oriented funds that tend to have small technology commitments.