Before and After: A Visual Guide to Market Trends and Opportunities

Every now and then, I’ll post some before and after pictures of some charts to show you how the Chartology played out over the years. The beauty of building long-term charts is that they don’t change very rapidly, so you can see if what you were looking at a year, five years, or in some cases 10 years or longer ago, has played out.

Knowing if the indexes are in a long-term bull or bear market helps immensely. If you’re in a long-term secular bull market, you know the odds are very high that the trading range you’re following will breakout to the upside, and vice versa in a bear market. At some point, though, the last trading range will end up being a reversal pattern instead of the next consolidation pattern, which can be difficult in determining during the formation of the last trading range in a bull market.