Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Searching For Perspective On Bounce Potential

Been searching for a little perspective on this here rally.

For background, when I went searching for perspective on the market implosion I came up with what I thought was a reasonable level for a decline, given the uncertainties and severity of the issues we were dealing with. It made sense to me that it was going to be somewhere between 50%-70%, given the premise that its severity would be sandwiched somewhere between the catastrophe of the 1929-32 period (-86%) and the mercilessness of the 73-74 bear market (-48%).

On the flipside, I'm searching for perspective on what kind of rally we could possibly see. For perspective, I would pitch the potential bounce at being somewhere between 25%-50%, given an avg. bear market rally of 20%, a high of 60% in 1938 and the next highest rally being 48% in 1929-30. For my money, if we experience a 40% bounce (930), that is a pretty good place to get off the equity market express. The scary thing is, I think that if we reach 930, we could easily go through to 1000 (50% bounce), but 1000 is only 7.5% higher than 930, and finessing these things is pretty hard to do.

Next up, I'm searching for perspective on what kind of retracement we might get.

Note: The magnitude and duration of bounces and retracements is very much connected with whether we are in a bull market or a bear market. I'm still in the bear market bounce category.

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