Dow Transports trying to reclaim broken post-2009 UP trendline

Here’s what the Dow Transports is up against to keep its bull market alive

The bull market nears its 5th birthday

The last time stocks across the board fell more than 10% was back in the summer of 2011 during the debt-ceiling debacle and subsequent S&P downgrade of U.S. debt. As a result, the S&P 500 Index swung down as much as 20% from late July to October before shifting to its current recovery.

In the current bull market and the past three comparable bull markets since 1980, 10% or more corrections have been a rarity, with two of those in the current bull run since 2009, and one during the 2002-2007 bull market. More common are pullbacks in the 5% to 10% range, which average about 10 per bull market. The current bull market has a higher than average number of those pullbacks: 13 since 2009.

What’s more likely to become the normal for at least the rest of the year is volatility and more pullbacks that are not-quite corrections, the strategists said. That’s the sort of thing that identifies a healthy bull market.