The last bear market, as measured by the broad S.& P. 500 index, stretched from March 2000 to October 2002.
Thursday marks eight years since the low point of the last bear market on Wall Street.
The last time the ratio was this high was in late 2007, at the start of the last bear market.
This week there have been hints that Egyptian attempts to broker a ceasefire in Gaza may at last bear fruit.
These losses are far more widespread than in the last bear market, the one that ended in 2002.
While stockmarkets rallied for more than four years from the bottom of the last bear market in 2003, many technology funds did not regain their previous highs.
The Dow Jones industrial average closed at 7,552.29, barely above its low in October 2002 during the depths of the last bear market.
The last bear market, in which annualized losses averaged 13.18 percent, lingered for 23 months until November 1999, according to the REIT trade association.
"There was a perception among a lot of investors that traditional asset allocation did not work to their expectations in the last bear market," Kevin McDevitt, a Morningstar analyst, said in explaining the interest in world allocation funds.
Barry Ritholtz, chief executive of Fusion IQ and author of a popular financial blog, The Big Picture, pointed out that investors were holding more cash than at any time since 2002, when the last bear market ended.
