Where are we now? That is the question. We do know that we are not in circumstances that could be regarded as the "old normal". Unfortunately the exact terms of the "new normal" have not been spelled out.

It is very unusual to find bonds, equities and gold all going up at the same time but recently almost all asset classes have done this. It seems that excess liquidity is going equally into the different asset classes, so that in effect there is only one market and only one trade - risk on or risk off.

The reason for this is that politics have intruded into economics to a far greater extent than we have been used to. The US Fed is not the only central bank to be printing money. They have printing presses and helicopters in China as well. The fact is that even in countries considered to be bastions of capitalism around 50% of people are dependent on the state for income.

Under the old normal, the month of September was traditionally the weakest month of the year. It was not so this time because the Fed poured billions of dollars into the market by using Permanent Open Market Operations (POMO).

After late October in a normal year the market picks up again into the strongest six months. However, as the usual seasonality is out of kilter, we may not get our year end rally.

On the four year cycle, which is driven by the Presidential elections, we are now in a very favourable period. It is after the mid-term election that the cycle turns up.

Our own road map (see page 25), which shows the shape of a bull and bear cycle round the four year pattern, also indicates this is a positive period - at least until March 2011.

If we were on what we describe as the standard road map, the four year low should have been in March 2009. We have just passed point E. We should then have a run up through next year, topping out in early 2012. The next bear phase would begin in 2013.

However, we have always argued that western markets are in a secular downtrend. In which case, the rise only lasts into next year and the fall takes place earlier. On this road map there is a high probability of going back down to the lows of 2009. In a worst case scenario it may even go lower.

The major question is, "has QE2 been able to drive markets back to the standard pattern or not?" We do not yet know the answer but it may not matter. Much of the money produced by the Fed's printing press goes overseas, driving up our preferred markets to even higher levels than we thought they would go.

We still come down long of gold and silver and positive about the markets of India, China-related and Brazil.

If we plot the rise in the US stock market in euros, or more importantly Swiss Francs, it has been falling. Overseas investors cannot make money buying US dollar denominated stocks as the currency is being "trashed" quicker than the market can rise.

If we read the history of the decline of great powers, their demise is normally the result of an attack by an invading barbarian, such as Attila the Hun. In the case of the US, power is slowly ebbing away due to a realignment of the geopolitical plates. But the US authorities are accelerating this process by deliberately driving the dollar lower.

The bottom line is this. We are in times when politics are overriding economics and the "normal" market cycles. The North Koreans' sabre rattling has unsettled investors while in Europe political expediency has prevented a collapse of the Greek and Irish financial sectors.

Major trends are being driven by political considerations and so many of the normal rules of technical analysis may be temporarily suspended.

David Fuller's view I commend Robin Griffiths' report to you, particularly the country and sector analysis. Investors will gain insights from this authoritative review.

Market 'road maps' are helpful, to the extent that they represent our history. We can look back and see what happened at any period in the past, including how markets responded to various stimuli and crises.

However talk of a road map for markets is misleading, in my opinion, because although history does sometimes rhyme, it cannot be relied upon to repeat in a precise fashion because the participants and circumstances will differ. Unlike the GPS system in your car, a so-called financial market road map cannot show us what lies ahead with any degree of precision.

Therefore bold extrapolations of historic market trends are speculative. I prefer to look at price charts in the manner of a naturalist. They show us what happened before, what is happening currently, and most importantly, the direction in which the market herd next turns, as that move commences. We can tell the herd what to do but it may not listen. It is more profitable to move with the herd.

Most people with a serious interest in markets and economies have a reasonably good understanding of what happened in earlier decades, not least because older people lived through much of it. When our more knowledgeable leaders in terms of monetary and fiscal policy know what happened before, they are able to change policies in pursuit of a different outcome this time.

This is what Mr Bernanke and other central bankers have done. If the challenge was to avoid another 1930s-style depression, which many feared and predicted, the central bankers have won, if not the war, a major battle. Fullermoney never forecast a depression because we could see that the policies were different this time. However we also know that there will be consequences, including of the unintended variety.

Subscribers may recall Fullermoney's view that with stock markets and commodities, monetary policy trumps most other factors, most of the time. Central bankers have certainly provided plenty of liquidity, not least Mr Bernanke. He has also targeted asset prices, quite openly, and is succeeding.

One of the unintended consequences is likely to be commodity price inflation. We have mentioned this before. Commodity prices fell back sharply last month but that appears to have been no more than a consolidation. If food and energy prices, in particular, extend their overall upward trends over the medium term, as we suspect, more central banks would respond with tighter monetary policies.

Meanwhile, following last month's corrective phase, here is more evidence of bullish chart action across stock markets. Note in particular some of the upward dynamics: Indonesia, The Philippines, Australia, Norway, Denmark, Germany and Canada. As with yesterday's review, breaks in the recent reaction lows would be required to suggest some additional corrective action before the cyclical bull market trends are extended.

(See also yesterday's item "Changes in the markets")