At one point just a few weeks ago, the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) was up an impressive 9% for the year. Since then, the index has retreated and now is up a modest 3%, and many stocks are still selling off. Perhaps we're not at the beginning of a new bull market after all.

Don't let this year's tepid bullishness deter you from stepping into new long-term positions. We may have yet to see the bear market's ultimate bottom. To true buy-and-hold investors, though, it just doesn't matter.

It's interesting. A great deal of time and energy is devoted to analyzing the market's short-term -- and even daily -- gyrations. But being rooted in emotions and fickle perceptions, these near-term ebbs and flows are unpredictable. The market's longer-term trends, those rooted in economic factors, are much more predictable. Yet, investors rarely put economic information into its proper long-term perspective.

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Source Fool.com