In the past two years, the month of August has started very weakly for the broad stock market but ended strong, producing gains of 1.3% and 2.1% in 2007 and 2006.

And going back to 1999, the month has been relatively benign, yielding an 0.2% gain on average despite the hellacious -6.4% decline seen in August 2001.

Yet these stats should not offer us much comfort as most of the positive Augusts occurred during bull markets, which we are most definitely not enjoying now.

So how does August tend to perform during weaker stretches for the market?

Not so hot. In 1973 and 1974, the bear market to which the current era is often compared, witnessed declines in August of -3.7% and -9%, respectively. (For tips on how to successfully weather a bear market, seel also: (“Users Manual for a Bear Market.")

The picture worsens the closer you look at periods similar to the present. I queried the Markethistory.com database to see how the S&P 500 tends to perform in August when it is already below its 200-day and 50-day averages and in the lower third of the range of the past year. 

It turns out that this configuration has occurred nine times since 1950. In seven cases, the market sank by an average of -11.2% over the next eight weeks. In the other two, it rallied by an average of 7.6%, though most of that occurred in 1982 in a month that launched a two-decade bull market.

So while Augusts have been relatively benign lately, the odds favor a significant decline this month. And, to be fair, if it turns out that August is fantastic, perhaps we will ultimately see it as the start of a long new bull market.

Now here’s the problem: At the risk of sounding overly simplistic, at the moment the market continues to suffer from a surplus of sellers. Although every upturn brings out brokerage cheerleaders who declare the final bottom is in place, the fact remains that bear markets don’t end until the desire to sell has been exhausted.

As Paul Desmond of Lowrys Reports points out, if a relatively small number of bullish investors begin to bid prices up while a large number of bearish investors are still feeding stock into every rally, it usually won’t be long until the bulls will be overwhelmed and undone.

Desmond says that since the latest rally began in mid-July, his firm’s unique Buying-Power Index has risen by 27 points. That’s the good news.

But the bad news is that his Selling-Power Index has not fallen by 27 points as would normally be expected and instead has actually risen by 4 points. That means selling pressure is now around the same level as at the July lows. In other words, sellers continue to dump shares into every rally attempt.

Desmond says that looking at annual charts of buying and selling pressure since 1933, he does not find a single instance in which a new bull market generated a strong increase in buying but no significant decrease in selling.

One explanation for what we’re seeing now is that most of the buying may be short-covering—i.e., it’s not bullishness, but just the desire to get out of short positions due to new rules governing the practice.

Desmond says that in 1938, 1942, 1953 and 2003—all major bear-market bottoms—selling pressure had actually begun to decline before the major price indexes made their final lows showing that the desire to sell had been exhausted before, rather than coincident with, an expansion in demand.

The bottom line here is that until the desire to sell has been satisfied—more than likely with a series of intense down days driving the market to new lows—there will be no statistical evidence to suggest a bottom is in place. So we really need to stay focused on raising and hoarding cash, doing selective short-selling when the odds are in our favor and holding a few cheap, strong-earning stocks we think can potentially outperform. 

Since this is Summer, the time of long trips in the car, you might ask, like my kids in the back seat, "Are we almost there yet?"

The answer is that the average bear market in the past century has been -30%, and the average loss for bear markets lasting over a year has been -42%.

Those figures would result in a decline in the Dow Jones Industrials to 8,400 to 9,800 and the S&P 500 to 950 to 1089.

The CBOE Volatility Index has been one of the best measures of investor complacency and desperation in the past decade. In the worst days of the bear market of 2000-2003, this measure of fear crested at around 48. In the declines earlier this year, it hit 35. Yet in mid-July it only got to 31, and now it’s in the low 20s.

This suggests we have a long way to go before investors have gotten desperate enough to throw out stocks with abandon in the sort of true, terrifying panic that sets bottoms in times like these.

We’re getting there, to be sure, as a look at the terrible recent stock performance of fine innovators and cash-generators like Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) will attest. But unfortunately we’re probably closer to the fourth inning than the ninth.

Jon Markman is editor of Trader’s Advantage and a regular contributor to InvestorPlace.com. To get this type of actionable insight from Jon and other InvestorPlace Media experts go to www.InvestorPlace.com today!