just as a reminder, the previous one lasted for two and a half years.
I think you may need to take a look at the charts. price drop began at the end of 2013 (December=$1100) and bottom (lowest price) was reached by the start of 2015 (January=$150) which means the actual bear market lasted a year.
That's not how I would measure things. Since we are only distinguishing between bull and bear markets, it's not really fair to call an accumulation range a bull market. They are specifically
not uptrends and are often characterized by lower lows such as the August 2015 crash.
In classical trading terms, Dow theory, etc. we didn't form the first signs of a bull market until October 2015. That's when we officially exited the long term bottom range, saw a weekly golden cross, and actually began forming unbroken higher highs/higher lows succession. We established previous long term resistance (the July 2015 top) as support.
In comparison, we have seen none of those things yet here. Structurally, it's still
really premature to declare the bear market over. This could technically still be a correction to the bear market so we need to be patient and let time do its thing. I'm confident we will form a bullish structure and break out into a bull market. But it's not visible on the charts yet.
OK, I can agree that we can not call the accumulation phase a "bull market" although I don't agree on the dates you mention for the start of it but since it was not the point I was trying to make, lets just pass that.
the point as you also said it yourself is that it was an "accumulation phase" and NOT a "bear market" anymore.
technically a bear market is where price is going lower and lower for whatever reason. so when the drop stops we can no longer call it a "bear market". I would even go as far as saying the bear market ended when price reached the $2xx range since the drop to $150 was due to some FUD (the scaling fight!) and was unnatural market manipulation.
I think most people call it bear market because they think there is only 2 choices! but in reality there are more. or maybe because they think if price doesn't double every month then we are in a bear market!