Market trends

Primary Market Trends
A primary trend has broad support throughout the entire market or market sector and lasts for a year or more.
Bull market
A bull market tends to be associated with increasing investor confidence, motivating investors to buy in anticipation of future price increases and future capital gains. In describing financial market behavior, the largest group of market participants is often referred to, metaphorically, as a herd. This is especially relevant to participants in bull markets since bulls are herding animals. A bull market is also sometimes described as a bull run. Dow Theory attempts to describe the character of these market movements.
India's BSE Index SENSEX was in a bull run for almost five years from April 2003 to January 2008 as it increased from 2,900 points to 21,000 points. Another notable and recent bull market was in the 1990s when the U.S. and many other global financial markets rose rapidly.
Bear market
A bear market is a steady drop in the stock market over a period of time. It is described as being accompanied by widespread pessimism. Investors anticipating further losses are often motivated to sell, with negative sentiment feeding on itself in a vicious circle. The most famous bear market in history was preceded by the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and lasted from 1930 to 1932, marking the start of the Great Depression. A milder, low-level, long-term bear market occurred from about 1973 to 1982, encompassing the stagflation of U.S. economy, the 1970s energy crisis, and the high unemployment of the early 1980s.
Prices fluctuate constantly on the open market. To take the example of a bear stock market, it is not a simple decline, but a substantial drop in the prices of the majority of stocks over a defined period of time. According to The Vanguard Group, "While there’s no agreed-upon definition of a bear market, one generally accepted measure is a price decline of 20% or more over at least a two-month period."
Market bottom
A stock market bottom is a trend reversal - the end of a market downturn and the beginning of an upward moving trend. "Bottom" is more than just a recent low in a stock market index, but a reversal of the primary trend. A "bottom" may occur because of the presence of a "cycle," or because of "panic selling" as a reaction to an adverse financial development.
It is very difficult to identify a bottom (referred to by investors as "bottom picking") while it is occurring. The upturn following a decline is often short lived and prices might resume their decline. This would bring a loss for the investor who purchased stock(s) during a misperceived or "fake" market bottom.
Some of the more notable market bottoms, in terms of the closing values of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) include:
Black Monday: The DJIA hit a bottom at 1738.74 on 10/19/1987, as a result of the decline from 2722.41 on 8/25/1987.
The bursting of the Dot-com bubble: A bottom of 7286.27 was reached on the DJIA on 10/9/2002 as a result of the decline from 11722.98 on 1/14/2000. This included an intermediate bottom of 8235.81 on 9/21/2001 which led to an intermediate top of 10635.25 on 3/19/2002.
A decline associated with the Subprime mortgage crisis starting at 14164.41 on 10/9/2007 (DJIA) and caused a short term bottom of 11740.15 on 3/10/2008. After a rallying to a temporary top on 5/2/2008 at 13058.20 the primary trend of the declining, "bear" market, resumed.
Baron Rothschild is said to have advised that the best time to buy is when there is "blood in the streets", i.e. when the markets have fallen drastically and investor sentiment is extremely negative.
Secondary market trends

Secondary trends are short-term changes in price direction against a primary trend. They usually last between a few weeks and a few months. Whether a trend is a secondary trend, or the beginning of a primary trend, can only be known once it has either ended or has exceeded the extent of a secondary trend.
A decline in prices during a primary trend bull market is called a market correction. A correction is usually a decline of 10% to 20%, but some experts say it can be a third or more. It differs from a bear market mostly in that it has a smaller magnitude and duration.
An increase in prices during a primary trend bear market is called a bear market rally. A bear market rally is sometimes defined as an increase of 10% to 20%. Bear market rallies typically begin suddenly and are often short-lived. Notable bear market rallies occurred in the Dow Jones index after the 1929 stock market crash leading down to the market bottom in 1932, and throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Japanese Nikkei stock average has been typified by a number of bear market rallies since the late 1980s while experiencing an overall long-term downward trend.
Secular market trends

A secular market trend is a long-term trend that usually lasts 5 to 25 years (but whose distribution is more or less bell shaped around 17 years, in the stock market), and consists of sequential 'primary' trends. In a secular bull market the 'primary' bear markets have in the past almost always been shorter and less punishing than the 'primary' bull markets were rewarding. Each bear market has rarely (if ever) wiped out the real (inflation adjusted) gains of the previous bull markets, and the succeeding bull markets have usually made up for the real losses of any previous bear markets. This is one of the reasons why a secular market trend may be said to encompass the primary trends within it. The United States was described as being in a secular bull market from about 1983 to late 2007, with brief upsets including the crash of 1987 and the dot-com bust of 2000–2002.
In a secular bear market, the 'primary' bull markets are sometimes shorter than the 'primary' bear markets and rarely compensate for the real losses of the 'primary' bear markets occurring during this extended cycle. For example, in the 1966–82 secular bear market in stocks, there was hardly any nominal loss. But in real terms the loss was devastating. (In the past most 'housing recessions' were of a slow nature, thereby allowing inflation to keep housing prices steady.) Another example of a secular bear market was seen in gold during the period between January 1980 to June 1999. During this period the nominal gold price fell from a high of $850/oz ($30/g) to a low of $253/oz ($9/g), and became part of the Great Commodities Depression. The S&P 500 experienced a secular bull market over a similar time period (~1982–2000).