The bear market is official ... now what?

One of the saving graces to having officially entered a bear market (a >20% drop) in mid-July is that we no longer need to debate whether we're going to get one or not. Based on long-term averages, we may have more to go with this bear both in terms of damage and duration but, as always, we caution investors about full-scale bailing out of the market at this point.

History has shown that typically, once the –20% threshold has been hit, the majority (two-thirds) of the decline is in the past. [The median bear market lost 33.5% and lasted 250 days.] And, of course, timing the bottom is nearly impossible.