Quote from trefoil:
That last sentence is the reason, summed up, why there won't be a market collapse.
I said this to S2007S and I'll say it to you: down is faster than up, because fear is more powerful than greed. Ergo, downmoves are over quickly, so quickly that folks like you get bewildered by the speed.
2008 was horrible, but when the market commenced its upmove in March 2009, that was it, all over, done for now.
You could argue, and I have models that show this, that the fall of 2008 was the final, climactic selloff of a bear market that started in 2000 with the bursting of the tech bubble. If that's the case, you're going to be dead before another one like that happens.
There will be scary downdrafts in bull markets. Even the late nineties saw the Asian currency crises, Russian default, and LTCM debacle. But they're over so fast you barely remember them years later.
I'm calling for a downer in Jan, but that's only because I think, for now, people have gotten too complacent and need to be shaken up a bit. I'm hardly expecting a collapse.