I have been expecting a market decline for months and it hasn’t happened. When we get big down days like we had at the end of February, beginning of June and a few recently, that’s not what I am looking for. If I could draw a real decline, it would happen over a period of weeks and in small amounts, not over one day in big amounts. We’d be down 2 on the S&P 500, then up 1, then down 2… you get the picture. Two small steps backward, one small step forward repeated until bulls get disappointed they aren’t getting the big gains they feel entitled to. So when I see 100 point drops on the Dow, I start expecting the bears to begin scalping penny gains and providing artificial support. All the previous declines this year have been buying opportunities - that’s been the bull line and they have been right. Until we get a selloff that isn’t followed by new highs or until the selloffs become too frequent to allow for happiness over the recovery, I have no reason to believe the bull run is over. I cannot design or construct or implement the start of a meaningful bearish move and absent a significant negative catalyst like a US-based terrorist attack (let’s hope not), I don’t expect any decline in the indices to be extremely long-lived or very big. More likely, even if we get a 10% decline, that will put us back to the February lows near 1380. This 4-year bull run has built a tremendous amount of momentum and support that will be hard to crack. So while I am bearish, I am not dreaming of a washout unless there is a negative shock that persists. Just as a reminder, the last bear market may have started in April of 2000, but it took about 5 more months before the S&P fell below 1450. The bulls may not like to hear it, but not every bear is expecting Armageddon. And when I look at the shape of these 1% down days, I am not even seeing a threat to ending record highs.