As Merrill Lynch (MER) and Lehman Brothers (LEH) cruise to multi-year lows this week, it’s easy to wonder if they are at levels that demand the attention of contrarians and value buyers.

Surely it would seem that they are cheap enough to grab for long-term holds now that many have plunged by more than 60% from 2007 highs, no?

Temasek Holdings, a sovereign wealth fund from Singapore, certainly thinks so considering it has become the investment bank’s largest shareholder by adding another few million shares this week to the millions it already bought—at almost double the price at the start of the year.

Yet, I’m not so sure as I think that to make market-beating money on the investment you need a time horizon that’s longer than most of us have in mind—i.e., more like fifteen years than five.

The problem is that bear markets are especially cruel to leaders of the prior bull market, and most importantly, the subsequent bull market doesn’t tend to help them much either. (See also: "Users Manual for a Bear Market.")

You may recall that the leaders of the 1990’s bull market were tech stocks. And they were the most crushed in the ensuing 2000-2003 bear market, with most major companies—such as Intel (INTC), Microsoft (MSFT) and Cisco Systems (CSCO)—absolutely walloped right away in 2000 and 2001. If you managed to buy their absolute lows during that bear market, you’ve done fairly well to be sure.

But if you bought virtually anywhere in the middle of the bear, six years later you’re still probably flat to down on your investment—after an initial recovery the big tech stocks were thrown into a sideways spin machine that continues to leave them 40% to 65% down from their 2000 highs.

Not only that, but Intel (INTC) is still down 26% from its January 2002 level, while Microsoft is still down 10% from that level—a point at which many thought they were incredibly cheap after falling for two years.

Well, the 2003-2007 bull market was dominated in part by banks, brokerages and homebuilders that rode a big credit bubble to tremendous highs, and now they are the companies suffering the most here in the bear market.

My belief—based both on history and the fact that banks are undergoing a deleveraging process that has radically unhinged their business model—is that they will next suffer the same fate as the major techs in 2003-2007.

Although they may recover some of their losses, the banks and brokers are unlikely to be among the leaders of the next bull market, whenever it starts. So we might as well just stop thinking about buying them as value plays every time they seem to get cheaper.

One day this bear market will end, and new leaders will emerge.

I don’t think anyone really knows right now what those leaders will be. It could be alternative energy, could be retail, could be transportation, could be utilities. It could very well be tech. No one really knows.

However, I do know that I will find them for you in Trader’s Advantage once a trend does emerge and give you plenty of time to make a fortune, as we have for years.

For now we are doing very well by sticking with selective longs among food makers, such as Hershey (HSY) and short sells in energy.

This article was written by Jon Markman, contributor to InvestorPlace Media. For more actionable insights like this, visit www.InvestorPlace.com.