Just starting it off. I wonder if they'll keep doing late day rapid-sells, or was that just a holiday week anomaly?

nope, don't see much evidence of any blow off tops

Just so it's clear to all the readers, what I'm saying is a blow off top in the form of an explosive move that 'goes parabolic' was not present at the 2000 and 2007 tops, as alluded to by all the pundits and bloggers. Looking at the current situation there is no parabolic move, but the last two bulls ended without any fanfare, and this one may, too. The overextended and poorly corrected nature of this last leg is much clearer when viewed next to these two other charts, making it, in my opinion, a better candidate for a severe sell off, not a less likely candidate, speaking only technically.

Here's a funny coincidence. I know it means less than zero, but readers like Eric would probably get a kick out of it. The into 2000 bull rise, low to high, was 333.56%. The into 2007 rise, low to high, was 205.05%. The current rise is 271.98%. The average of the rises from 2000 and 2007 is 269.30%. Isn't that curious?

Here's another curious factoid. Using the high and low bars and my time counter on QC on the daily $SPX charts, the 2000 bull lasted 1359 trading days. 2007 lasted... 1259 days. Today is 1194 days. Too bad this one didn't last 1159 days... The 82-87 bull was 1316 days. The 74-80 bull was 1604 days (but this had two over 20% corrections along the way, so how should this be classified? It meets no accepted criteria in my opinion). All of these calculations, and previous calculations, are, of coursed, based on the data QC feeds me. It gets tough from the 87 low and the start of 95, since there were two possible little bulls with smaller bears in between. Point is, if this bull fits, time-wise, in with some of the previous big ones, it could have some time left, and that would go along with Old Yeller printing a bunch more money and goosing this pig up quite a bit. Imagine another 200 or so trading days of up.Man, would that suck. All those completely giddy 'bulls' mistaking a bull market for skill. And all the damage it will do to society. Oh, well. whatever will be, will be.

The really interesting thing to me is what happened to the 4.3 year cyclical cycle? The average above is 1311.33 days (ignoring the hard to classify 74-80), and that's 5.04 years based on 260 trading days a year and 5.20 years based on 252 trading days (260 = (52 * 5), even though that doesn't take into account holidays, so on the NYSE it would be minus 9 holidays, 252, on average). I guess when you average in the shorter bulls (no reason they can be ignored), that makes up for it. 87-90 was 714 days and 90-94 (94 was a 'stealth' bear market, as they say) was 862 days. If they are included, the average is 1102 days, which is 4.24 years based on 260 trading days a year and 4.37 based on 252 trading days. As they say 'There it is'. This is not an exhaustive approach at all, just a quicky, back of the envelope analysis.

People are focusing on the longer bulls only, like they are all 5-6 years now on average because with all the money printing in more modern times they seem to be getting longer. So, the cycle average (which comes from other data, not the market, it's a 'natural' cycle, perhaps related to the business cycle, and perhaps much grander in scope) of 4.3 years is 1118 days based on 260 trading days a year or about 1084 based on 252 trading days.

Bottom line to all this musing out loud is the 'average' might be more like 1084 trading days or something in there. If so, this bull is past the average. One can't just look at long bulls, but one can't also ignore that short bulls seem to be getting less frequent. My conclusion is that it could be over any time now, or it could go another year. Armstrong says about 1.75 years more. I'm not trying to pick the top, only assess what the best position plays (say for a retirement account) might be, what the risks are, and so on, as well as being very ready short-term when the shift happens. Best I can say, there is no valid argument to say the odds favor this going on much longer, no less a lot longer. It may, but it is not the standout scenario all the bulltards say it is..

The Aussie.

jim, thanks for your thoughts

This 87-90 area looks interesting.

I have problem with uploading charts, but there is a nice ABCD to KZ in the Cable at 1.6393-96.

And it closes one tick from the HOD!!!