Read John Kenneth Galbraith's classic book on the 1929 Crash if you think there is something unusual about the stock market's wild swings of late. In fact, such craziness was routine as shares worked their way toward the historical top of August 1929. We're running a little ahead of schedule this time, having seen the Dow Industrial Average peak just above 14000 in mid-July. But that's only a few weeks' difference, and we'd be surprised if it turns out that history has not repeated itself, more or less. Even so, no less a sage than Richard Russell, a permabear until relatively recently, put out a memo on Wednesday that gave bulls something to look forward to. Here is what he wrote, as posted in the Rick's Picks chat room yesterday: Just a 'Hard Shake'? "My take is that we're seeing a 'mini-bear market' coming within the framework of a much larger primary bull market. I don't think this is the end of the world, I just think we're seeing the financial world being grabbed by the neck and shaken, shaken hard. At this point I want to go over the all-important 50% Principle again. The Dow rise from its 2002 low of 7286 to the 2007 high of 14000 took the Dow up 6714. points. The 50% or halfway level of that rise is 10643. As long as this "mini-bear market" halts above 10643, I will consider the primary trend of the stock market to remain bullish." Mind you, this isn't some self-serving, narcissistic jackass who knows exactly what to say ' and would say it no matter what he believes ' in order to get in front of CNBC's cameras. No, this is a guy who has seen it all, and who has experienced bear markets up-close in a
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