Can you please explain the term “secular” bear market used in last night’s Daily.

Ah, secular bear markets, secular bull markets. The idea is that these are long term cycles in one direction of the other. Bear, long term downtrend. Bull, long term up trend. The bull market that ended in March 2000 was a secular bull market that covered two decades. Some say shorter as it was broken up by 1987, 1994, 1998, but secular trends can have countercyclical moves within them. Thus those short bear markets did not change the long term uptrend of the secular bull market.

With this bear market there are some saying that it could last for years and years. After such an excess to the upside that is not idle talk. There can be bull markets even in a longer term bear market just as there were those shorter bear markets in the longer term bull market.