Roger Montgomery wrote an interesting piece in the Weekend Australian today.

He talks about the historical average times to achieve a technical Bear market (-20% average 236 days) and then the additional time to absolute low (additional 131 days on average).

For comparison the current Bear market (based on S&P 500) took 137 days (fifth fastest since WWII).

Interestingly, historical averages suggest it takes about 2 years for the market to re-establish previous peaks from the Bear market milestone.

He acknowledges that this information is useless as a predictor of the future.

However for people like me feeling battered and bruised by recent falls there is a bright side.

If the average time for a market recovery is achieved then the average market returns from today to achieve the previous peak will present a CAGR of 14.7%.