$S&P 500 Index (.SPX.US)$ There’s a saying on Wall Street: Don’t confuse brains with a bull market.
After all, when most stocks are gaining day after day, it’s easy to look smart. Indeed, the market has been in bull mode for so much of the last decade-plus, it's hard to remember what challenging investing looks like.
Technical analysts differ on the definition of a bull market, but by one measure the S&P 500 confirmed it's in a bull on Aug. 18, 2020, when it closed above its previous all-time high recorded earlier in the year, on Feb. 19.
The S&P 500's longest bull market in history began in March 2009 and ended abruptly in March 2020, clobbered by coronavirus fears. The ensuing bear market cut fast and deep, but bottomed out in late March. About a month after its nadir, the market returned to bull-market territory and just kept chugging along.
Justified or not, those of us who have stuck around in stocks are probably feeling pretty brainy these days.