Lurqer, what I don't like in Hamilton's analysis is its "selectivity", data that do not fit are not included. This great bear market had two additional monster runs, the one from late May 2000 to a major double top in the Autumn, and the late December 2000 late January 2001 run induced by expectation and then actualization of the Fed first "surprise" rate cut. How can one build a statistically significant model from 5 events while dropping two of the events as outliers?