Take a deep breath and consider this...

It's the end of the world ... er, hang on a minute. Hold your fire, doomers, there's more to this bear market lark than meets the eye.

I don't wish to practise sunshine journalism, but before we all panic it's not a bad idea to step away from the blood-spattered short-term charts and consider the bigger picture.

The JSE Top 40 index has gone nowhere all year, churning around the 26000 mark with no clear direction. To assume it's all downward from here is maybe, just maybe, a tad hysterical. Consider offshore interest in SA shares.

According to JSE data released this week, foreigners have been net sellers of just R77.93-million worth of local shares this year (translate that into dollars or euros and you'll see it's almost nothing).

Given the utter horror show playing out in developed-world economies, it's no small achievement to have seen such a small outflow. Obviously, the question is whether Thursday's global rout is the start of a much grimmer pattern.

Hmm, although it's hard to be madly bullish, one wonders if Mister Market hasn't got other surprises in store for those inclined to be fresh bears.

Let's go back a few years and consider our current position. In 2006 foreigners bought a net R73.698-billion of JSE shares and in 2007 a net R63.272-billion. (Those are billions of rands, not "mere" millions.)

Then came the worldwide credit-backed calamity of 2008, during which foreigners sold a net R54.439-billion. That was only a blip, because in 2009 the offshore buyers were back, snapping up R75.418-billion and another R23.119-billion in 2010.

I know that's an awful lot of numbers, so maybe it would help if you could imagine a chart of the JSE's performance.

First, the big fat bull run. From a base of about 13000 in May 2006, the JSE Top 40 ran all the way to 31000 in May 2008. Those are the kind of capital gains foreign investors know they'll never find in their own decrepit stock markets.

It must be noted that there were two frightening dips in that two-year upswing: one of 4000 points (eek! but done and dusted within two months) and another whopper of 7000 points (all over in four months). Just consider the lip-smacking possibilities in those drops for short traders - and they're all over the show these days.

Hedge funds must have been salivating when the JSE Top 40 when it reached its high point three years ago. You couldn't open a newspaper without pundits saying the market was overvalued, and it was no surprise that the subsequent "correction" saw the index spiral down for five months to 16000 in October 2008.

Next came a chart move that gave the bulls another chance to climb in: a half-hearted trot up 5000 points, and an equally feeble fall by the same number.

The pattern on the graph by March 2009 screamed double-bottom and every bull in town (and, as we've seen from the statistics, from much further afield) piled aboard for the latest gallop northwards.

Notwithstanding the rubbish performance of the JSE this year, we're still in the same bull market. It is not a complacent bull market, by any stretch, and we can probably expect a series of ugly draw-downs - with the support level at 23000 being particularly critical to hold.

It is a mug's game to attempt to forecast the market. The best one can do is monital global investor sentiment, which has a habit of being reflected on the technical charts and in the statistics kept by the JSE on foreigners buying and selling.

Also worthwhile is to keep an eye on stock valuations. While most SA fund managers haven't been shy about expressing their caution, they say "pockets of value" keep popping up the longer prices stay subdued and earnings forecasts continue to surprise on the upside.