Taking the growl out of future bear markets. (Commentary).

To put this dismal year for stocks in a little better light, think about the three bull markets we've had or almost had.

I'm defining bull market by the simplest rule of thumb -- a period in which a broad market index rises at least 20 percent. Similarly, a bear market is any decline of 20 percent or more.

"Oh? What bull markets are those?" you may wonder, eyeing the atrophied numbers in your latest investment statement. Let's look at the September 2001-April 2002 bull market, followed by the July-August bull market and the October near miss.

From Sept. 21, 2001, the market low after the terrorist attacks, through March 19 this year, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index climbed 22 percent. Bull Market!

Then, the bear returned with a vengeance, taking the indexes to new five-year lows in July. Then the S&P 500 rallied 20.9 percent from July 23 to Aug. 22. Another bull market!

Since these occurred within the context of the worst extended market decline in 30 years, the whole exercise may seem idle. Under the crude definition we are using, the term bull market doesn't mean much.

That's the point. While the whole business of distinguishing bull markets from bear may be important to professional traders, momentum-riders and journalists, it's not much help to individual investors focused on long-term objectives.

The futility of the whole bull-and-bear business is enhanced by the speed with which each move now occurs in an age of instant information. What we often speak of as "market volatility" might just as easily be called velocity.

Simple judgments about bull and bear markets can lead easily to errant thinking. The impulse may naturally arise to buy stocks when a recognizable bull market is in force, and to flee or stay away in bear markets. Alas, this often proves to be a formula for buying high and selling low.

For a while in the '90s, it appeared bear markets were a thing of the past. These days we console ourselves that the bearish part of the cycle must occur if we are going to have the bullish part.

As Shelby M.C. Davis, who founded investment manager Davis Selected Advisers LP, puts it: "Bear markets concentrate the mind just as bull markets lead to sloppy thinking."

True as that may be, it's no excuse for us as an economic society to stop trying to find ways to render bear markets obsolete. Or, failing that, to run economies in such a way as to make bull markets as long and strong as possible.