You know you’re in a bear market when you are grateful that the Dow Jones Industrial Average is only down 300 points. You were afraid it would be down 600 or 1,000 points so 300 doesn’t seem that bad.

You are grateful that one or two days a week, like clockwork, the stock market gives you a break and goes up.

Another sign of a bear market is when the pundits who are predicting the end of civilized society as we know it sound more sane than the ones who predict that at some point the stock market will only go down a little bit.

It’s a bear market when you are tempted to buy something and you say, Nah, it can wait a few months.

You’ve given up all hope of anything good happening ever again.

You aren’t afraid to sell something because you know it will go down further but you won’t buy anything because, what’s the point?

Keep in mind, now that we’ve established that we are in a bear market, both bear and bull markets seem to last longer than we ever thought possible and go further than seems reasonable. But it’s always darkest before the dawn.