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Among the dozens of indexes we monitor, the year’s final all-time highs (S&P 500 Consumer Staples and S&P 500 Low Volatility Index on December 29th) can’t possibly provide any comfort to stock market bulls.

We’ve long argued that this tightening cycle began in January 2014, the month of the first of seven tapering moves which occurred through October of that year. There’s both economic and market evidence to back up this claim.

The Dow Jones Transports was the first U.S. index to top in this cycle (December 31, 2014), and it closed January 7, 2016 down 24.1% from that historic high. That development, in and of itself, sharply increases the odds that a new cyclical bear market is underway.

Valuations are high. Market internals are weak. And the MTI is negative. But for those seeking some truly authoritative evidence that there’s stock market danger ahead, consider the accompanying cycle chart unearthed from a gossip column in a 1958 issue of the Minneapolis Star.

When the Fed surreptitiously began to tighten as we believe (via tapering), in January 2014, history suggested that Consumer Discretionary and Small Caps would be the most likely initial market victims (at least from a relative perspective).

Foreign stocks’ perpetual underperformance has opened up a valuation gap that should look extremely appealing to anyone with a horizon of more than two years. But proceed with caution.

Hedge funds have shuttered by the dozen in the past few weeks, with the worst carnage among those focused on Emerging Markets and commodities. But the problem is broader.

Models can prove helpful in overriding an investor’s natural (and frequently costly) impulses. But we’ve come to believe that our long experience in model building and implementation has succeeded not only in overriding these impulses but in actually modifying them.

Liquidity “consuming” strategies like price momentum are generally considered to be more volatile than liquidity “providing” approaches like value investing.

Our original research on price momentum dates back to the late 1960s, and was based not on asset classes but on equity sectors and industry groups. We stumbled upon the Bridesmaid effect, in fact, while testing a handful of simple strategies about a decade ago.

We recognize that—regardless of their empirical appeal—momentum-oriented approaches aren’t suitable for every investor. For those investors, we’ve identified an alternative sector allocation strategy that’s delivered long-term results almost identical to those of the Bridesmaid approach, but which is based on a single, simple selection criterion that should appeal to the most hard-wired contrarian: The Low P/E.

A review of the past year’s performance of “Dream” and “Nightmare” equity groups from back in 2014.

As another Chinese stock market drama is unfolding, we may see a repeat of last summer’s action, where U.S.-listed stocks with pending “going private” deals saw their discounts widen significantly.

Groups within Info Tech and Health Care have been long time favorites; the Financials sector also looking more appealing of late. We are still anti-Commodity (for the third straight year).

The third month of Q3 2015 earnings reports registered an Up/Down Ratio of 1.12. With only 52% of firms reporting higher earnings, the lack of earnings growth isn’t confined to just the Energy and Materials sectors.

The U.S. 10-year yield was quite volatile, fluctuating in a 100 bps range between 160 and 260, and ending up a mere 10 bps higher for the year. But it was still better than most other major asset classes which saw all risk and no reward.

The 2016 pattern looks good on paper, but if the excitement in the first week of the year is any indication, we highly doubt 2016 will turn out to be another typical election year.

Our Ratio of Ratios crashed through its historical median of 4% in December and barely clings to its premium. This ends a period of almost seven years above the median.

In each of our three market cap breakdowns, Growth prevailed over Value, but Large Cap Growth was the only segment with a positive return, at a strong +9%. Growth stocks have experienced impressive outperformance since the middle of 2014.

It’s a scary thought but what does 2015 have in common with the infamous years of 2001, 2008, and 2009? An earnings recession for the S&P 500 — and the 2015 vintage certainly has some unique traits.