S&P 500 bull market now the oldest ever

4.1% Share of Apple in the S&P 500’s bull market return since March 9, 2009

new york — The S&P 500’s bull market turned 3,453 days old on Wednesday, making it the longest such streak in history, according to some investors’ definition.

S&P futures pointed to a slightly lower open one day after the benchmark index set an alltime intraday high that slightly exceeded the previous one set in late January.

Wall Street is widely considered to be in a bull market that started on March 9, 2009, when investors grappled with the global financial crisis that had vaporised over half of the US stock market’s value. Since then, the index has more than quadrupled.

Now after nine years and five months, investors are debating when, not if, the current run-up in stock prices will end.

To be sure that the S&P 500 is still in a bull market, it would have to close above its record high set on January 26, which it failed to do on Tuesday. “That potential new high is important,” S&P Dow Jones Indices analyst Howard Silverblatt wrote. “[If] we drop 20 per cent before we reach a new high, we will go back and declare that the current bull market ended on January 26, 2018, the last high.”

Wednesday’s record is also debatable because Wall Street experts define bull and bear markets differently. Some experts say a bull market occurred from 1990 to 2000, which would make the current one the longest ever. Others say that bull market started in 1987 and ran to 2000.

Apple is responsible for 4.1 per cent of the S&P 500’s return since March 9, 2009, more than any other company. Microsoft is second, with a 2.4 per cent contribution, according to Silverblatt.