A reader asks:
I’ve heard Ben mention several times recently that we are in year 15 of a bull market. He’s obviously referencing the end of the GFC in 2009 as the start of the current market cycle. Have we not had two bear markets in 2020 and 2022 (defined as -20% from the high)? When you had Tom Lee on last year (TCAF) he said 2024 was going to be year 2 of a bull, so he’s got a different definition. Can you please explain what people in the finance community use to define ends/beginnings of cyclical markets?
Here’s the chart in question from a recent blog post:
Did the bull market from 2009 get reset in 2020 or 2022? Or should we keep it going just like we did with the 1987 crash during that bull market?
The problem is these things aren’t exactly scientific.
There are some loosely accepted definitions but you have secular bull and bear markets as well as cyclical bull and bear markets. Things can get murky since different investors have different rules when it comes to hitting the reset button and starting over.
One standard definition is a loss of 20% or more means the start of a bear market and end of a bull market, at least on a cyclical basis.
Yardeni Research publishes some handy historical bull and bear market tables1 going back to the 1920s. Here’s the bull market table:
And the bear markets:
You can see there are plenty of both bull and bear markets.
Here’s a chart we created that allows you to visualize these cycles:
It is important to recognize that using this 20% definition puts many of these bull and bear markets in the cyclical stage.
The problem is many of them
