If this bear rhymes
Every bear market, aligned at its all-time high. Three finished the same way: bottom 12–13 months in, at or near bottom-of-cycle valuations. This one reached those valuations early. Here is the record, the arithmetic, and one honest statistical overlay.
The record: four bears, one script
| Bear | ATH date | ATH multiple | Bottom multiple | ATH → bottom | Depth |
|---|
Each cycle tops at a smaller multiple of trend — 11×, 6.2×, 2.8×, 1.1× — and bottoms ever closer to the floor: 0.53×, 0.55×, 0.41×. Separately, every era’s deepest valuation of the past decade sits between 0.41× and 0.42×. Volatility decays; the deck holds.
Aligned at the high
Solid lines are recorded history. The green band marks where all three prior bears bottomed. The dashed line and orange fan are the only statistical overlay on this page: the median and 10–90% range of modern-era (2015+) outcomes from the current valuation shelf (0.38–0.48×), drawn forward from today. In dollar mode, analog paths are mapped onto this bear’s growing trend.
What each rung is worth, out to 12 months
Pure arithmetic: the dollar value of every trend multiple as the power-law trend compounds (≈37% over the next 12 months). Reading down a column shows what re-rating pays; reading across a row shows what patience pays at a constant multiple. Cells on the historical median path are outlined in orange. Colors show return vs today’s live price.
Method & honesty
- Model: Santostasi power law (β = 5.688, log₁₀A = −16.493, genesis 2009-01-03); floor = 0.432× trend. Same parameters as everywhere on this site.
- The fan is occupancy, not prophecy. It is the distribution of what actually followed the ~385 modern-era shelf days with a measurable 12-month outcome (of 459 shelf closes since 2015 — the current episode is too recent to have one) — roughly ten independent episodes. It contains zero examples of the floor regime failing and therefore cannot price that scenario. The falsifier lives elsewhere: ~120 consecutive closes below the floor.
- The midterm footnote. All three prior bottoms fell in US midterm-election years (2014, 2018, 2022), and 2026 is one. This is not extra evidence: midterms and halvings are both four-year clocks at a fixed offset, so it is the same rhythm counted twice. We note it so you can spot the double-count when others sell it as confirmation.
- “Bottom” = the bear’s lowest close. One asterisk on the tidy script: in multiple space the 2013–15 bear made a deeper valuation low seven months after its price bottom (0.365× in Aug 2015, vs $177 in Jan 2015). The dots and the green band mark price bottoms; the chart shows the full paths so the asterisk is visible.
- Sample honesty. Three completed analogs is a rhyme, not a law. The chart shows every path, not a smoothed average, so you can see the dispersion with your own eyes.
Related: Bear Recovery (the mean-reversion mechanism) · The Ladder (where today sits in all of history) · Trend Value Distribution. Educational tool — not financial advice.