This long-term look at the S&P 500 is a chart I’ve posted before. It clearly shows the significant resistance at the 2000 highs, one of the factors that led to the selloff we’ve seen in the index over the past year.
This time I added an indicator to the chart that I find a useful trend-reading tool: the 8 and 34-period exponential moving averages (some people use 10/40; I just like Fibonacci numbers). Simply put, when the 8-period average is above the 34, the trend is bullish and when it is not the trend is bearish.
A “bear market” is typically defined as a 20% decline from the high and at the March lows the S&P fulfilled this definition. But I prefer to use these moving averages to dictate trend and according to these, it is still bullish.