Barry Ritholtz, Columnist

Looking for the Bear in the Bull Market

It isn't always easy to tell when we're in a short-term cyclical stock market or long-term secular market.

March 20, 2015 at 4:06 PM UTC

Updated on

March 24, 2015 at 7:42 PM UTC

Barry Ritholtz is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is chairman and chief investment officer of Ritholtz Wealth Management, and was previously chief market strategist at Maxim Group. He is the author of “Bailout Nation.”

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When discussing bull and bear markets, it sometimes helps to think of them as coming in two distinct flavors: Short-term cyclical markets and long-term secular ones. Knowing one from the other isn't always easy.

A number of veteran market observers such as Raymond James's Jeffrey Saut, technician Ralph Acampora, strategist Laszlo Birinyi and market historians Jeff and Yale Hirsch have made the argument that U.S. markets in 2013 entered a new secular bull market, much like the one that began in 1982. The 1982 secular bull market was preceded and followed by secular bear markets that featured lots of sharp rallies and sell offs, but netted investors nothing after more than a decade. Long-term secular markets tend to be driven by earnings, valuations and trend.