The big debate -- is this or is this not the longest bull run in history today?

This is a pretty insignificant question if you ask me. But, seeing as this has been getting a lot of press lately, it begs the question if this truly is the "longest" running bull market ever. Or, if it is all just a bunch of hogwash by the media.

According to Senior Market Strategist Ryan Detrick, today marks the longest bull run (the one that began on March of '09) in history, surpassing the October 11th, 1990 to March 24th, 2000 bull market.

But is it really?

It seems Ryan Detrick, and many others alike are using the absolute intraday levels as the starting and end points instead of the close which is the most commonly accepted threshold to mark the beginning and end of a bull market.

The logic of using the October 11th, 1990 date as the beginning of the "last" bull is flawed. In the bear market that went from July 16th, 1990 to October 11th, 1990 the S&P 500 only suffered a -19.92% decline, not -20% that some keep alluding to. Why not count the -20% INTRAday S&P 500 decline that occurred in 2011? Yes, the SPX did actually fall -20% on an intraday basis in 2011. This is not fake news.

Here is a table courtesy of Stock Trader's Almanac that lists all of the bull and bear markets for the S&P since 1929, including the shortest bear market on record (45 days long) that ended on August 31st, 1998 and the two most recent that ended on October 3rd, 2011 and February 11th, 2016.

If you really want to use that hard -20% rule, the last longest bull run that began on December 4th, 1987 and ended on March 24th, 2000 is 4,494 calendar days. In order to surpass this, the “current’ bull that began on March 9th, 2009 would have to run up until at least June 28th, 2021 to top it. We're not even close to that.

I just find it a bit funny how the media has this one wrong.

That isn't to take anything away from this bull run. It has been a helluva run no doubt about that. But, this ain't no new record (yet). Check back here in 3 years. :P

Submitted August 22, 2018 at 02:02PM by bigbear0083 https://ift.tt/2w6Dzjr