When will the bear market end (views and opinions)

Out with the old...

In a week that straddles 2002 and 2003, investors mull what comes next.
December 27, 2002: 4:15 PM EST
By Justin Lahart, CNN/Money Staff Writer

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - When 2002 kicked off you'd have been hard-pressed to spit on Wall Street without hitting someone who thought that a third year down for stocks was out of the question.

History argued for an up year, after all -- three down years in the red hadn't happened since the set that ended with 1941. The market had shown surprising resilience from the shock of Sept. 11, the economy was on the mend and the worries over corporate governance that had arisen following the Enron scandal had proved overblown.

If the odds against three down years were long, they're incredibly stacked against four in a row -- the only time that happened in the history of the Dow Jones industrial average was the period spanning from 1929 through 1932. Despite this, the swagger and confidence that stocks will plow their way into the coming year isn't there like it was last year.

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Date Time (ET) Release For Consensus Prior
Jan. 14 08:30 Export Prices (Ex. Ag.) Dec. NA -0.1%
Jan. 14 08:30 Import Prices (Ex. Oil) Dec. NA 0.1%
Jan. 14 08:30 Retail Sales Dec. 0.6% 0.4%
Jan. 14 08:30 Retail Sales (Ex. Autos) 01/04 NA 403K
Jan. 15 08:30 Business Inventories Nov. 0.2% 0.2%
Jan. 15 08:30 Core PPI Dec. 0.1% -0.3%
Jan. 15 08:30 PPI Dec. 0.2% -0.4%
Jan. 15 02:00 Fed Beige Book - - -
Jan. 16 08:30 Core CPI Dec. 0.1% 0.2%
Jan. 16 08:30 CPI Dec. 0.2% 0.2%
Jan. 16 08:30 Initial Claims 01/11 NA 389K
Jan. 16 12:00 Philly Fed Jan. 9.1 7.2
Jan. 17 08:30 Trade Balance Nov. -$36B -
Jan. 17 09:15 Capacity Utilization Dec. 75.7% 75.6%
Jan. 17 09:15 Industrial Production Dec. 0.2% 0.1%
Jan. 17 09:45 Michigan Consumer Sentiment Jan. 88.0 86.7