Note: this is a long term target
http://seekingalpha....0?source=feed_f
When I last interviewed noted market historian Laszlo Birinyi back in February 2011, he was one of a very few big-name gurus who said we were in a genuine bull market that could last for years. I caught up with Birinyi, president of Birinyi Associates, Inc., in Westport, Conn., again last week, two-and-a-half years later, just before the Standard & Poor's 500 Index posted its strongest winning streak since mid-July in the normally dismal month of September.
As of Wednesday, the S&P hovered near its recent all-time high above 1,700. That number was right around Birinyi's "worst case" target from 2011. So, is he declaring victory? Not yet. Though he's a little cautious for the short term, he thinks the current bull market -- which many investors still don't accept -- ain't over yet. "I think the bull market continues," he told me. "I think we will be over 2,000 before it's over."
How does it get there? As a market historian, he compares this market to five other major bull markets over the last half century. As the table below shows, they ranged from the relatively brief Kennedy bull market of 1962, which lasted slightly more than 3.5 years and returned 79.8%, to the monster bull of the 1990s, which went on for nearly eight years and saw the S&P quadruple.
(click to enlarge)
The average return of those five bull markets was 167.5%. The current bull's gain of 150% is close to that, but at 4.5 years, it has lasted a year less than the recent bull market average. Birinyi thinks this bull still has the juice to keep going. He says bull markets go through four phases of sentiment: reluctance, digestion or consolidation, acceptance, and finally exuberance. Of course, you can't precisely measure those phases until the bull market is over, but Birinyi says the current bull entered phase four in July, 2012. Since then, the S&P has risen 22%.
Edited by fluid, 13 September 2013 - 05:31 AM.
