There is another chart that I am not showing you and I call it "the black line" chart. If you know about the existence of the 2 thick black lines, then the last 20 years makes perfect sense.
The chances are the market will not violate the lower black line and if it does it could either be a bear trap or the end to the bull market. There were many crazy events in history where the reasons for lower black line violation were there, but it only happened once and that was a bear trap.
Twice in the history of the black line has the upper line been violated and those times were 1987 and 1996. One time was a bull trap and the other time was an incredible breakout which resulted in a run of 300% in 4 years.
There are many possibilities, but knowing that the black line exists limits the different end results.
What we do know about 1987 was that there was some economic trouble that revolved around that particular time such as issues of recession....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_1980s_recession
The 1996 violation occurred because of a sudden pickup in the economy and productivity. The pullback back to the black lines was caused by a slowing of that same growth.
Therefore, I believe the following end-results will be likely with the SPY. A pullback to the 1400 level followed by an advance over the top black line leading to the 2200 level within 4 years.
The advance over the black line needs to be monitored carefully as the same conditions that exist in 1987 do exist today. We know that an advance might either lead to a grand bull trap or a breakout.
The catalyst event that caused the 1987 crash was computerized stop-loss orders and I will illustrate this fact in a following post on this thread.