Bill Bonner, daily columnist for The Daily Reckoning, UK Edition, turns his attention today to the latested antics of the U.S. Fed Chairman and the ten year rolling trends in the U.S. stock market.

Bill Bonner (The Daily Reckoning, UK):

Gold rose $15 yesterday. What to make of it?

Perhaps it was because Ben Bernanke’s extended his “extended period” pledge?

He said, in effect, if this economy doesn’t come out of its slump, it won’t be his fault. He’ll keep monetary policy as loose as possible for as long as possible. Not that we had any doubt about it. He has a theory. It’s a bad theory, but it’s all he has. And it tells him that you fight a depression with loose money.

So, what do you expect? Interest rates will remain artificially low as long as Bernanke can get away with it… or until the depression ends… whichever comes sooner.

That said, he hardly has to lift a finger. Judging from the last auction of short-term Treasury debt, lenders can’t think of anything better to do with their money than to give it to the government – in return for nothing. The last auction produced a yield of zero on one-month loans.

We went to visit a pair of clever Swiss bankers yesterday. These fellows manage money for clients all over the world. What do they think? They were focused on stocks:

“This year, the people who made the most money were those who were most heavily invested in equities. And if the patterns of the past hold up, 2010 will be a good year for equities too.

“Whenever the ten-year performance goes close to zero, the next few years tend to be very good for stock market investors.

“In fact, there has never been an exception, going all the way back to 1881. Last year was one of the worst years in stock market history. This has been one of the best. And next year should be one of the best too.”

He handed us a chart to illustrate his point. It shows the 10-year performance of the stock market.

We see that very rarely are stock market returns negative over a 10-year period. In fact, there are only two worth mentioning. One was in the ‘30s, when in August ‘39 stocks had returned MINUS 4.68% for the previous ten years.

The other major losing period came in February of this year, when investors had gotten an average annual return of -3.43% since 1999.

The message seems simple enough. When the market turns down sharply… expect a sharp turn-up to follow. But studying the chart more carefully, we see two things.

Click here for the rest of Mr. Bonner’s commentary on The Daily Reckoning, UK Edition.