It's unlikely that Monday marked the end of the bear market

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 300 points Monday, extending the bear market even further and taking the stock market down to levels first seen in the spring of 1997, a dozen years ago.
You'd think that the ensuing fear and panic would be more than enough to bring about the capitulation that contrarians have been waiting for before forecasting that the bear market was at or near its end.
But you'd be wrong.

Might this bear market nevertheless bottom out without capitulation taking place? To gain insight into this question, I analyzed all bear market bottoms since 1965, using the definition used by Ned Davis Research, the institutional research firm.

Incredibly, I found that, on average across these past bear markets, sentiment hit its lowest point 15 calendar days prior to the actual day of the bottom. That's impressive -- very few other market-timing indicators come this close.

Contrarian analysis of new market low.

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However, this average of 15 days hides a maximum delay of 112 days. Hulbert's own HSNSI is now 234 days since it hit its low. All of this suggests that trying to judge data on very few points is liable to create huge errors, or it shows that the final leg down is still to happen.