The current secular bear market we are in and have been in since 2001 has many more years to go.  It is likely that investors will see great gains from some of the cyclical bulls that are going to occur within the secular bear market, but overall, it will be until at least 2014 or later until we are in a true secular BULL market.  Zeal LLC has some great articles on secular bear and secular bull markets and this weeks essay is extremely worth the read.  For anyone who hasn’t read Adam or Scott’s articles, I strongly suggest you take the time and read some of them.

This week Adam points out that the secular bear market that began in 2001 still has several years to go because most bull and bear markets run for an average of 17 years.  It takes this long for sentiment to completely change and for the financial markets to get their firm footing in one direction or another.  The good thing about being in a secular bull or bear market is the fact that there are always investments that make a great deal of money.  When stocks are in a bear market commodities are in a bull market.  We have seen this since 2001.  Some commodities have tripled in their eight year bull while most stocks have been flat or lost value.

Adam also does a great job of pointing out how history has a tendancy to repeat itself.  He relates the current secular bear market to that of the 1970s.  If any of you have memories of this, you know that stocks were flat the entire decade while commodities went to the moon.  Will this happen again?  It is very likely as not only are there bullish supply/demand factors in commodities, but there is also likely to be hyper inflation.

With Ben Bernanke doing everything he can to keep mortgage rates low, he has printed WAY too much money.  This means that the value of the dollar is going to decline and the price of commodities is sure to rise.  It will be very interesting to see when commodities start to see their parabolic rise, but I hope it does not happen soon.  When the parabolic rise starts, that is when we only have about one to two years left in the commodities bull.  I hope to have much more capital in commodities before we see this doubling or tripling of value within a year or two of the parabolic rise.

Overall, the secular bear market has many years to go.  If this bear is like most in the past, we will not see another stock market secular bull market until around 2018.  This is great news if you have been smart with your inflation investments and put your money into commodities such as Gold, Silver, Oil and Copper.  For more information on where to put your money make sure to access Zeal LLC.