A four-season regime map before the shorter chart

The archive frames a long economic cycle as roughly 60 years, with expansion and contraction each occupying about half of that span. An investment cycle is overlaid on that long wave as four seasons: a refreshed spring with benign inflation, an inflationary summer, a feel-good autumn of hidden strain, and a winter of debt repayment.

Seasonal analysis and market regime classification are used here to locate that backdrop first. The shorter chart is read only after the season is named.

Four seasons, located by events

Each season is described as roughly a quarter of the full cycle. Seasons are located more by events than by a precise calendar. One winter is placed from 1929 to 1949, and the following spring is placed as ending around 1966.

That four-season map of a multi-decade expansion-and-contraction cycle is therefore a regime context. It is not a clock that turns on a fixed anniversary.

The autumn event cluster

Four events are used to classify the turn into autumn: a peak in prices, a peak in interest rates, a recession, and a bear market in stocks. That coincident peak in prices, peak in rates, recession, and equity bear used to mark the autumn turn is placed around 1815-16, 1864, 1920-21, and 1980-82.

Autumn is described as the season of the largest speculation in stocks, bonds, and real estate. The archive illustrates that description with the 1921-29 and 1982-2000 advances.

What each season usually favors

Spring is said to favor stocks under benign inflation. Summer is said to favor inflationary assets such as commodities, real estate, and gold, with stocks doing little.

Autumn paper-asset expansion is explained as policy easing after a high-rate recession. Bank credit then goes to consumers rather than into already-built capital goods, until valuations become unsustainable, as in early 2000.

When autumn becomes winter

A peak in stock prices is treated as the signal that autumn has ended and a deflationary winter has begun. That winter is driven by excess debt built mainly in autumn.

The winter that follows is the contraction regime in which accumulated debt is reduced through defaults and weaker credit. The 2000-era decline is classified as a long-cycle winter bear market on that reading.

Wave structure as a nested overlay

Elliott wave analysis is treated as a secondary, conceptual overlay that another analyst can nest inside the long-cycle regime. It is not used here to replace the season.

The 2000-era decline is classified as that winter bear market rather than as a war-driven or multi-century wave count. TradersWeek editorial reading: if the wave count and the four-season map disagree, keep the map as the context and treat the count as the claim to test.