My guess is that we are now closer to the end of a market downturn than the start of one. However, you need to distinguish between the two main kinds of market downturn. One is the stereotypical bear market – the kind of long-term decline that drags on for a year or more and is generally accompanied by a painful recession and a deep fall in stock prices. Our last bear market took place from mid-2000 through the last quarter of 2002, after the Internet boom of the late 1990s went bust. In that period, the Toronto index fell from 11,300 to 5,800. The other type of downturn, the so-called correction, may also be accompanied by a recession, and can also do a lot of damage to stock prices. However, a correction generally ends in less than a year, sometimes a lot less. In last Friday’s Hotlines, I referred to what some people called the ‘Asian contagion’ correction of the late…