Investor's Guide: Are we actually heading for a global bull phase?

The market remains in the intermediate uptrend which started on March 6 from the Sensitive Index's low of 8,047. These will be revised upwards to the point where the next minor decline ends. Global markets are also in intermediate uptrends.

Long-term Trend: The market's long-term trend is now almost certainly up, with the Sensitive Index and the Nifty climbing out of the range they had been since the end of October.

Specifically, the Sensitive Index has risen past 11,000 and the Nifty has cleared 3,250 - these were the upper ends of the sixmonth long range.

The CNX Midcap index is very close to 4,000, the level it needs to cross to enter a major uptrend like the main indices. Once this is done, a bull market would be confirmed. Over 70% of the hotline stocks made 10-week highs or better during this rally, and almost 40% are above their 200-day moving averages.

We are almost certainly in a new bull market, as defined by a rising long-term trend. This is evinced by the fact that the index has risen over 40% since its October bottom of 7,697. However, it is still too early say how much further the market would rise and for how long.

Long-term investing should be delayed until an intermediate downtrend develops and runs for a week or two.

However, existing portfolios should be held on to, as the long-term trend appears to be up.This portfolio building exercise suggested over the last few months at lower levels should be yielding positive returns.

These returns should not be diluted by buying at the current levels, or getting out of the market too soon.

Global Perspective: The intermediate trends of all global markets are up. The Dow would enter a bull market (major uptrend) if it were to climb above 9,500. It would go into an intermediate downtrend if it were to fall below 7,715.

Quite a few of the global indices have started to record their highest closings since last October, and a few 200-day moving average crossovers have also occurred. This suggests that the long-term trends of global indices are also turning up.

The Sensitive Index had lost 33.6% in the twelve months that ended on Thursday, down 9 positions to the 18th place among 35 well-known global indices considered for the study. Chile continues to head the list, but with a 11.5% loss. Shanghai, Spain, Malaysia and South Korea follow.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has lost 35.6% and the NASDAQ Composite has lost 30.5% over the same period. (These rankings do not take exchange rate effects into consideration).