While many cynics say that the stock market’s bull run will soon end, Laszlo Birinyi sees it as having quite a ways to go.

“This bull market has the strongest start of any in history,” Birinyi, the founder and president of Birinyi Associates, says, according to MarketWatch. “When you have a very sharp rise in the first part of the bull market, those tend to be prolonged bull markets.”

Birinyi recently said that if the current bull run followed historical patterns, the S&P 500 could hit 2,854 by Sept. 4, 2013. He’s backed off that a bit, MarketWatch reports, saying that 2,800 is a best-case scenario. More recently, he’s said that his “worst case” for the S&P is that it hits 1,750 in 2013, and that a more likely scenario is that it hits 2,100.

Birinyi bases his assessment on an analysis of previous bull markets. He says bull markets have four phases: reluctance, digestion or consolidation, acceptance, and exuberance. The first and fourth are usually the strongest in terms of performance, and this bull market’s first stage was particularly impressive.

Birinyi also says the current market “has the characteristics of a long-duration, secular bull market (low multiples, excessive negative attitudes, strong start)”, and thinks the bull run will last about four-and-a-half years.