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A secular market trend is a long-term trend that usually lasts 5 to 25 years (but whose distribution is more or less bell shaped around 17 years, in the stock market), and consists of sequential 'primary' trends. In a secular bull market the 'primary' bear markets have in the past almost always been shorter and less punishing than the 'primary' bull markets were rewarding. Each bear market has rarely (if ever) wiped out the real (inflation adjusted) gains of the previous bull market, and the succeeding bull market has usually made up for the real losses of any bear market. In a secular bear market, the 'primary' bull markets are sometimes shorter than the 'primary' bear markets (not often in the stock market), but rarely wipe out the real losses of the 'primary' bear markets during the cycle.
In the 1966 - 82 secular bear market in stocks, there was hardly any nominal loss, But, in real terms the loss was devastating. (In the past, most 'housing recessions' were of this slow nature — allowing inflation to keep housing prices steady)
An example of a secular bear market was seen in gold over the period between January 1980 to June 1999, over which the nominal gold price fell from a high of $850/oz to a low of $253/oz,[7] which formed part of the Great Commodities Depression. The S&P 500 experienced a secular bull market over a similar time period (~1982 - 2000).[8]

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