Booyah Breakdown: Profiting From Cycles

Life moves in cycles. The planets, the calendar, tides and women (and I'll argue men) all have cycles.

And, no surprise, the markets move in cycles, too.

Tons of them, actually. Many market observers argue that there's a three-year cycle, a six-month cycle ... there's even a presidential cycle (which we'll get to in a minute). Heck, there are even daily and weekly cycles.

Cramer recently mentioned that during options expiration week, there's always a down day -- usually Tuesday or Wednesday of the week. So those weeks, too, become cycles.

A cycle is basically a pattern, and the pros are constantly looking for patterns in the market to help them make better trading decisions. And many of you wrote in wanting to know how they do it. So the Booyah Breakdown is going to try to show you.

Market cycles are generally measured from the end of a bear market through a period when prices rise -- your bull market -- until they reach a near-term peak before beginning a declining phase or a new bear market, says Frank Fernandez, chief economist at the Securities Industry Association.

And when one cycle is finished, the next begins. So a cycle generally looks like that good old bell curve from your Economics 101 class in college.

Many traders try to time their buys and sells with a cycle's highs and lows, notes Jake Bernstein, author of Hot Stock Market Strategies: 5 Secret Investment Tools That Work in a Bull or Bear Market.