Everything moves in cyclical patterns. Secular trends are just unusually long cyclical upswings, which will eventually be followed by a down swing.
Quite a few cyclical upswings are hitting turbulence at the moment, from bank lending to house prices, oil and commodity prices and the boom in shares in emerging markets. This also provides reassurance; as sure as day follows night the present bust/ downturn will be followed by a new boom and that boom will be so strong that we will again be talking about secular trends.
The problem with the cycle is that we have no way of telling the scale of the phases. How far will house prices fall? When will the oil price resume its climb? At what level will indices for emerging stock markets hit bottom? It is all a mystery with experts offering a whole gamut of well-argued but inconsistent possibilities.
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