Hellraiser, I have been reading your posts for a while now and...

Hellraiser, I have been reading your posts for a while now and it appears blatantly obvious that you see a correction in a bull market and a dropping bear market as one in the same. Since 1980 thru to 2000 we experienced the longest bull market in history, '87, 2001 and other corrections were simply that, corrections in an uptrending market. You need to go back from 1980 to see what a bear market is. A bear market signals a long term change in sentiment (albeit slowly) from the idea that stocks always make money to stocks always lose money. A cheap stock in a bull market is an expensive one in a bear market. Corrections in bull markets rebound because sentiment hasn't changed and the fall in stock price makes it look cheap. Falling prices in a bear market are originally seen this way, but eventually are seen as vindication that stocks are money losers no matter what p/e ratio relative to other asset classes. I read recently on this site that the prolonged fall in the Japan stockmarket was accompanied by 12 major "rallies". A week or two of rising prices is not something to base long term macroeconomics on - Leave that for the U.S. Fed.