Market analysts (of which I am a minor variety) talk all the time about secular bull and bear cycles. I argued in this in Thoughts From The Frontline in 2002 (and later in Bull’s Eye Investing) that most market analysts use the wrong metric for analyzing bull and bear cycles. (For the record, even though I am talking about the U.S. stock market, the principles apply to most markets everywhere. We are all human.) “Cycles” are defined as events that repeat in a sequence. For there to be a cycle, some condition or situation must recur over a period of time. We are able to observe a wide variety of cycles in our lives: patterns in the weather, the moon, radio waves, etc. Some of the patterns are the result of fundamental factors, while others are more likely coincidence. The phases of the moon occur due to cycles among the moon, the earth and the sun. In other situations, though, apparent patterns are no more than the alignment of random events into an observable sequence.

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