Dent looks at demographic trends and projects them roughly one generation into the future to "predict" likely market trends. He bases these predictions on the fact that people on the whole do behave pretty much the same, in terms of consumption, at each stage of adult life. Dent has a long-term, 'fundamental' approach.
He was alone in 1992 predicting a
massive spike in stocks.
Down markets tend to deliver alot of price action in a compressed timeframe. This is one big way that properties of downtrends differ from those of uptrends. Downtrend dynamics are not the mirror-reverse of uptend dynamics.
This historical chart of the NASDAQ100 provides some context from the recent past. 4 years of uptrend erased on 1 year of downtrend. Those who shorted with good entry points did very well for themselves. It does not look like it now, but back then, to actually short that market was an intense psychological challenge.
Trading on Dent's current analysis of likely future (down)trends is more difficult than trading on his 1992 (up)trend advice.
