Hey Saul:
Beyond those issues I mentioned, there are other supporting elements to a down market trend.
For example, you point out that the removal of quantitative easing has been known for some time which is of course true. But…there is no real fear in the market as you have suggested…in fact if anything, there is complacency. Look how we are at a 2 year low on the VIX:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=%5EVIX&t=2y&l=on&…
Check out this chart on historical market cap to GDP:
http://www.vectorgrader.com/indicators/market-cap-gdp
Or one could look at the PE10 here:
http://advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/PE-Ratios-and-…
And yes as regards the summer doldrums, there is pretty good data to support this:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2154873
All this said, I am not a money under the mattress investor either. My only point is a word of caution that by no single measure that I am aware of at ThIS time, do we see a significant margin of safety with stock investments. In fact, we see just the opposite on almost every measure.
A fear mongerer would be out of the market here. I am more espousing keeping some % of cash available to take advantage of what seems likely lower prices in near term. Nothing is more disheartening then to be 100% invested and be subject to all down investments such that one only has a reallocation strategy rather than deploying new money into potential bargain hunting.
Take all this with a grain of salt which is of course more than it is worth.