3M is by all accounts “blue-chip”, so is J&J, P&G,IBM, Colgate,TRP in Canada, the Royal Bank Siemens,SKF,Nestle etc. etc. The way you know that you are in a bear market is when these stocks for seemingly no good reason, en masse,start dropping and often rapidly. Another good indicator is that you get stopped out of all the carefully selected “buy” stocks such as Cameco, R, Pfizer etc.
3M is an excellent example. On the left are my comments as of July 26, the stock that day was around $91.50. On the right today’s chart with a low of $78.50, that is 14+% in about ten working days. From the top in early July of about $98 it is 19.9% The first target still is $72, and that is not necessarily the bottom by any means so be careful not to fall for the temptation of buying “bargains” Last time your broker bought RIM for you at $80 it too was a bargain seeing it came off $160 whatever.Today, it is a quarter of that.