Captain's Quarters

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A Preview Of Next Week

GYS 360

Hold On Tight !!!

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Hope your having a Great Weekend

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How Do You Measure A Bull Market


MMGYS CQs

Bull Market! It May Be Your Last



But the proverbial bull is celebrating a milestone.

The bull market in U.S. stocks turned eight years old on Thursday, March 9.

The current bull market, defined by prices that continue rising without being interrupted by the 20% decline that would signify a bear market, began for the S&P 500 exactly eight years ago, in the depths of the recession in 2009. Since then, the benchmark index has gained 249%, with just four official corrections—defined as a decline of 10% or more—the last of which happened in the beginning of 2016, according to Yardeni Research.

And while signs of a stock market bubble have abounded recently, from the Trump Bump rally sending the Dow Jones industrial average to new highs, to Snapchat's mega IPO last week in which even Uber drivers were snapping up Snap (snap, -1.04%) stock, the current bull market is not particularly remarkable. As bull markets go, this one is not yet the longest, nor the best in terms of performance, nor even the most expensive.

So, to paraphrase the Broadway musical "Rent," how do you measure a bull market?

At 96 months old, this bull market is not the oldest in modern history (post-World War II): That title goes to the bull market that lasted from the fall of 1990 to the early spring of 2000, or 113 months, according to CFRA and S&P Global, before spectacularly flaming out in what has since become known as the dot-com bust. That record dot-com bull market, which is also the best-performing, with a 417% gain, lasted just more than a year longer than the current bull market's age. No bull market has ever made it to its 10th birthday.

The current bull market isn't even the the runner-up in performance: The baby-boom bull market in the 1950s is the second-best performer, with the market having risen 267% during its seven years. Nor is the ongoing bull market the one in which stocks became most expensive, though it's getting close. The S&P 500 was trading at a multiple of 30 times earnings when the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, and 26 times earnings when it was the same age as the current bull; today, the S&P 500 has price-to-earnings multiple of about 25.

How long does this bull market have yet to live? No one knows for sure, but because bull markets age in what you might call dog years, if it were a human it would be very, very, very old. The average American lifespan, despite a slight decline recently, is about 79 years, or 948 months. The average age of a bull market, meanwhile, is 57 months. So, if you assume that every bull-market year is equivalent to about 16.6 human years (948 months divided by 57 months), this eight-year-old bull market is actually 133 years old. (The oldest person on Earth is currently 117.)

Still, as Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist for CFRA points out, historically, the longest bull markets "went out with a bang and not a whimper. Like an incandescent light bulb, they tend to glow brightest just before they go out." The S&P 500 has already blown through Wall Street's targets for the end of 2017, forcing Stovall and others to raise their expectations. modestly, for another 4% to 10% rise this year. That would pale in comparison to the 36% surge the S&P 500 posted in the year leading up to the ninth birthday of the dot-com rally.

Don't count out the current bull market's ability to celebrate its golden birthday on March 9 next year with similarly impressive returns. Writes Stovall in an eloquent research note this week, "Bull markets don’t die of old age, they die of fright. And what they are most afraid of is recession." At the moment, even economists including Fed chairwoman Janet Yellen aren't all that worried about a recession anytime soon.

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Sure Janet !

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Coal Update when's Americas first Day Without Burning Coal ?

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For First Time Since 1800s, Britain Goes a Day Without Burning Coal for Electricity

By KATRIN BENNHOLDAPRIL 21, 2017


LONDON — Friday was the first full day since the height of the Industrial Revolution that Britain did not burn coal to generate electricity, a development that officials and climate change activists celebrated as a watershed moment.

The accomplishment became official just before 11 p.m., when the 24-hour period ended.

Coal powered Britain into the industrial age and into the 21st century, contributing greatly to the “pea souper” fogs that were thought for decades to be a natural phenomenon of the British climate.

For many living in the mining towns up and down the country, it was not just the backbone of the economy but a way of life. But the industry has been in decline for some time. The last deep coal mine closed in December 2015, though open cast mining has continued.

Coal-fired power generation contributes heavily to climate change; burning coal produces twice as much carbon dioxide as burning natural gas. Reducing the world’s reliance on coal and increasing the use of renewable energy sources like solar and wind power have long been part of proposals to prevent the worst consequences of climate change.

Now on a path to phase out coal-fired power generation altogether by 2025, Britain, also the home of the first steam engine, is currently closing coal plants and stepping up generation from cleaner natural gas and renewables, like wind and solar.

“Symbolically, this is a milestone,” said Sean Kemp, a spokesman for National Grid, Britain’s power grid operator. “A kind of end of an era.”

The first public coal-fired generator opened at Holborn Viaduct in London in 1882. Since then, the British economy, one of Europe’s largest, was thought to never have gone without power from coal for a whole working day.
Photo
A train carried visitors to Hollycombe, a museum of steam-powered attractions, in Liphook, England, last week. Credit Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images

There have been shorter coal-free periods before. Last May, for instance, coal generation dropped to zero for the first time, but only for a few hours at a time. On a weekend later that month, National Grid achieved a coal-free stretch of 19 hours, the longest at the time, Mr. Kemp said.

Demand for electricity tends to be lower in the spring, when homes and offices turn off their heating and normally do not yet have a need for air-conditioning. It tends to be particularly low on a Friday and during the Easter holiday period.

But the trend away from coal as a source of electricity is structural, officials say, with coal-free days likely to become more common. Since 2012, two-thirds of Britain’s coal-fired power generating capacity has been shuttered. Some plants have been converted partially to burn biomass, such as wood pellets. Last year, the share of coal in total power generation dropped to 9 percent, down from 23 percent in 2015 and 40 percent in 2012.
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Some countries have already left coal behind in power generation. In Switzerland, Belgium and Norway, “every day is a coal-free day,” Carlos Fernández Alvarez, a coal analyst at the International Energy Agency in Paris, pointed out.

In the United States, where coal still accounts for about 30 percent of power generation, Vermont and Idaho are the only coal-free states, and California is close behind, he said.

Coal is still used in heavy industry like steel and cement production. But given how important coal was in Britain’s history, Mr. Alvarez described the news on Friday as more evidence of a trend toward “low-carbon electricity.”

“The first day without coal in Britain since the Industrial Revolution marks a watershed in the energy transition,” Hannah Martin, head of energy at Greenpeace U.K., told The Guardian. “The direction of travel is that both in the U.K. and globally we are already moving towards a low carbon economy.”

Meanwhile, in the London Museum of Water & Steam, which has a heritage collection of coal-fired steam engines and railway engines, the operations manager, Edward Fagan, was planning for a future exhibition.

“Coal-fired power generation is very fast becoming a heritage item,” Mr. Fagan said. “One day we’ll have to add a power station to our collection.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/world/europe/britain-burning-coal-electricity.html?_r=0