secular bear market?

pokerbabe made a reference to a secular bear market. not knowing what it was I read up on dow theory. drew a trendline for the overall market for the bottoms and the tops for the overall market for the last 200 years or so. highs trace right to the all time high for the s&p 500 and tracing the lows came up with anticipated future low for the s&p of around 300. seems unbelieveable doesn’t it? the chart I looked at seems to indicate that we are in a secular bear market. secular bear markets range from 8-20 years so accordin to dow theory we have to wait for at least 2008 for the next bull market. i defer to pokerbabe on explainin it better cause im just interpretin what I read.


heres the thing though. i see plenty of great performances by companies over the last year in both stock price appreciation and earnings growth. an age old question, is it a market of stocks or a stock market? certainly theres market risk but it seems that companies do trade a lot off of fundamentals i.e. if valuations are in line with anticipated earnings growth a change in earnings prospects does seem to drive valuations in the expected direction.