If 2018 rings in a bear market, it could look something like the Kennedy Slide of 1962.

That was my conclusion in “Riding the Slide,” published in early September, where I showed that the Kennedy Slide was unique among bear markets of the last eighty years. It was the only bear that wasn’t obviously provoked by rising inflation, tightening monetary policy, deteriorating credit markets or, less commonly, world war or depression.

Moreover, market conditions leading up to the Slide should be familiar—they’re not too far from market conditions since Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election. In the first year after Kennedy’s election, as in the first year after Trump’s election, inflation seemed under control, interest rates were low, credit spreads were tight, and the economy was growing. And, in both cases, the stock market was booming.

Here’s an updated look at Trump’s stock rally versus the Kennedy rally and subsequent Slide:

As you can see, we’ve now reached the chart’s critical juncture—at this time of the calendar in 1962, the post-election rally was ending, and the Slide was about to begin. Our chart begs the question: Will the similarities continue and lead us into a Trump Slide in early 2018?

Or, with less drama, you might like to hear my Q1 stock market outlook.

While it’s certainly possible Trump’s rally has run its course, I’ll argue that it’s unlikely. And to make my case, I’ll rely largely on a single indicator, one that measures monetary policy. I use the indicator to help determine whether policy is behind the curve, ahead of the curve, or somewhere in between. In this article, I’ll call it VCURVE, for “versus the curve.”

Tracking VCURVE Through 16 Market Corrections

Before I explain how VCURVE is calculated, let’s look at the history. The following chart compares VCURVE to every instance since 1954 when the stock market corrected by more than 10% and for at least two months:

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