Stop Thinking the 30% Stock Rally Means the Bear Market Is Over

From The Business Insider, May 1, 2009:

Now that stocks have rallied nearly 30% off their low, pundits agree: It's a new bull market. So be very afraid.

Market punditry is a lagging indicator, not a leading one. Pundits are excellent at describing what has happened, not what is going to happen.

But doesn't the 30% rally off the bottom obviously mean that the bears are fools, that it's finally safe to get back in the water? No. It doesn't obviously mean anything.

Take a look at the charts below, from Doug Short.

First, the "mega-bear quartet"--an overlay chart of the bears that began with the DOW in 1929, the NIKKEI in 1989, the NASDAQ in 2000, and the S&P in 2007. The last one, the current bear, is the blue line. The horizontal axis is time from the peak, measured in years.

If you're feeling confident that the 30% rally means that happy days are here again, take a look at the humongous rallies in the NIKKEI (red) and NASDAQ (green) that happened at this point in the process. Then look at what happened afterward:

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