“Four stages” of stock movement

First, I would like to point out that the four stages are not a concept I came up with. I learned of the four stages of; 1-Accumulation, 2- Markup, 3- Distribution and 4-Decline in Stan Weinstein’s excellent book “Secrets for Profiting in Bull and Bear Markets”. Briefly, accumulation is the process of buyers gaining control after a bearish trend, markup is the bullish phase represented by higher highs and higher lows, distribution is the process of sellers gaining control after the markup phase and decline is the bearish phase which is represented by lower highs and lower lows.