An All-Time Bull Market

A lot of crazy stuff has happened this decade.

The pandemic of course:

Which caused oil prices to go negative (I still can’t quite believe this happened even though it makes sense given the circumstances):

The trillions of dollars in government spending combined with a supply chain shock led to 9% inflation, the highest levels in four decades:

Which caused the Fed to raise rates from 0% to 5% in no time:

The stock market has experienced plenty of volatility along the way:

There was the Covid crash, the 2022 inflation bear, the Liberation Day plunge and the minor correction from the war this year.

Plus, the rise in rates and inflation gave investors the worst bond bear market in history:

And yet…the stock market has boomed in the Roaring 20s:

The S&P 500 is up 15% per year.

In fact, the 2020s have an even better return (so far) than the 2010s, which had annualized returns of 13.4%.

If you start from when things turned around in March of 2009 following the Great Financial Crisis, the stock market is up nearly 17% per year.¹

That’s 17 year of 17% annual returns.

This bull market is a stone’s throw from quite possibly the greatest American bull market of all-time:

Some might quibble with the fact that I’m starting a bull market from a bear market bottom. Fine, whatever.

The point remains — we are now fast approaching nearly two decades of extraordinary returns in U.S. stocks.

Selling your stocks during a bear market can be devastating to your performance but missing out on a bull market of this magnitude can be even more harmful to your portfolio.

If you avoided all of the permabears telling you the end is near the entire way up, nice work. There have been all sorts of reasons to sell along the way.

At some point the fun will come to an end. It always does.

There will be down years, long bear markets, a financial crisis and maybe even a recession. Those are still possible, right?

My advice?

Enjoy the bull market while it lasts. This one is turning into an all-timer.

Further Reading:
New All-Time Highs