Put aside your cherished technical indicators and oscillators for a moment and contemplate the long-term chart of the E-Mini S&Ps with visual imagination alone. For me, that means ignoring systemic threats to the global banking system and geopolitical tumult that should have cut the S&P 500 in half by now. Now ask yourself: Do the gratuitous 300-point swings that this vehicle has traced out over the last 20 months look like a major top to you? To my eye, at least, it is far easier to imagine a big leap first to dizzying heights — a leap that would turn permabulls giddy enough to set the hook while grinding the last surviving permabears into silt.

Alternatively, it is just as easy to imagine a frightening dive to 1400 or so that everyone would mistake for a replay of 1929 but which would in fact be a retracement for a running start at 2500 and beyond. Whatever happens, I cannot convince myself that the tedious swings we’ve experienced since late 2014 are the last hurrah of the most spectacular bull market in U.S. history. Under the circumstances, we’ll need to keep an open mind about whether big moves either up or down are meaningful to the big picture. They will be tradable in any case, and without much risk, since no trend move of significance can begin without tipping us off via a very minor trend change on a chart of lesser degree.