a dog-eared town

Today the S&P 500 closed at a new 4-year high. So how does the current S&P 500 rally rank? To answer this question and to provide some perspective, all major S&P 500 rallies of the last 73 years are plotted on today’s chart. So what does this chart show? Several things… Over the past 73 years, the S&P 500 has begun a major rally 20 times or once every 3.6 years on average. Second, most major rallies (90%) resulted in a gain of less than 150% and lasted less than 1000 trading days (4 years). With the S&P 500 up 57.8% as of today, the current rally would be classified as relatively long in duration but slightly weak in magnitude. Stay tuned…

Notes:
- The S&P 500 was not adjusted for inflation or dividends.
- There are 252 trading days in a year (100 trading days equal about 4.8 calendar months).
- A major stock market rally has been defined as a 30% or greater increase in the S&P 500 (following a major correction).

So this is a longer rally than normal, but under average for gains. Sounds just like what everyone is talking about. How lucky everyone got it right.