The bear market has unfinished business

Stocks are rising for the moment, explains Andrew Van Sickle. But the longer-term trend is still unmistakably bearish.

Are we still stuck in a long-term bear market? That sounds like a stupid question, says John Authers in the Financial Times. The S&P 500, which sets the tone for the rest of the world, has almost trebled since March 2009. It now stands at a new record high. But the question isn't as straightforward as it seems.

In 2003, a multi-year rally began in Western markets. Many hailed a new long-term bull market. Others, including MoneyWeek, suspected that the rally was probably just a bounce within a long-term, or secular, bear market a huge bear-market rally.

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Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.