good time to buy.....from the news files:
.....For the bears to succeed in re-establishing a longer-term bearish trend they should have taken control by now, which they’ve been unable to do. The 10-year cycle low is due by late September/early October, and if they can’t crack the market severely between now and then, then they will have lost their last chance, for heading into the 2005-2009 time frame there is no major long-term cycle due to peak or bottom until 2010-2014. And as history proves, there has never been an X-5 to X-9 time frame in the past 100 years that has been net bearish in the stock market. Why the bears persist in bucking the clear pattern of history is beyond me.
Turning our attention back to the short-term, according to Stock Trader’s Almanac (STA), harvest time in the agrarian economy of the early 20th century made August the best month of the stock market from 1901-1936. Since that time, however, August has become the worst month in the past 15 years for the Dow and S&P, and the second worst on the NASDAQ (although the NASDAQ was up 11.7% in 2000). The best Dow gains in August were in 1982 (+11.5%) and 1984 (+9.8%) as bear markets ended.
According to STA, however, there is an exception to the negative August historical pattern: an election year! August in an election year tends to do much better than non-election year Augusts, says STA, and they ranked #2 for the NASDAQ (average gain 3.5%). The average August election year gain for the S&P is 1% (up 7, down 6). STA further points out that the market tends to do well in August when an incumbent is running in the election.