esmith, I couldn’t agree more. Gotta love that graph. The seasonality you describe shows up in the current downtrend in the form of reduced rate of slowdown in spring/summer and increased rate of slowdown in fall/winter. Similar to 1993 or 1995, only much more negative pressure.
Anyway, while you are right that in this market it is not really too important to know the impact of seasonality, in the future it likely will be and readers should be aware of this as a tool to help recognize the difference between a bounce and a trend.
