Will US Stocks stay in a Bear Market until 2014 ?

The answer could be yes according to a paper by FRBSF entitled "Boomer Retirement: Headwinds for U.S. Equity Markets?" where they compared price earning ratio in relation to demographics.

The first chart (above) compared the inflation adjusted P/E ratio of the S&P 500 to the M/O ratio. The M/O ratio is the ratio of the middle-age cohort, age 40–49, to the old-age cohort, age 60–69. As we can see the two seems correlated.

The second chart is where it becomes to be very interesting. Based on expected demographic trends (usually quite predictable), they created a model to see what the P/E ratio would look like in the years ahead. As we can see on the cahrt above, the P/E ratio is expected to bottom out around 2024 according to their model. That would mean another 13 years of bear market for the S&P 500.

This is also in accordance with Schiller's 10-year inflation adjusted P/E chart, where it shows bear market usually end with P/E below 10, except it does not provide timing.