On the bull market’s 8th birthday, 8 facts to consider

The run of the bulls on Wall Street turned 8 years old Thursday and, despite its advanced age, could rage on with expectations of a better economy, lower taxes and stronger company earnings.

“Just because the (bull) market has hit a birthday, or is among the longest ever, doesn’t mean that it will ‘die’ of old age,” said Paul Nolte, portfolio manager at Kingsview Asset Management in Chicago. “Markets don’t really pay attention to the calendar or the candles on the cake.”

On the anniversary of one of the biggest bull markets in history, U.S. stocks meandered Thursday as major market indexes finished a touch higher even as small companies finished lower. On Thursday, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index edged up 1.89 points, or 0.1 percent, to 2,364.87 while the Dow Jones industrial average added 2.46 points to 20,858.19.

It was a far different and darker place eight years earlier on March 9, 2009, when the S&P 500 closed at 676.53 and the Dow closed at 6,547.05. The U.S. financial system had been shaken to its core by the collapse of Lehman Brothers a few months earlier, plunging prices for stocks and a freeze-up in lending.

That turned out to be the day the stock market bottomed out after that crisis, however, and the beginning of the current bull market, which is now the second-longest since World War II following a 10-year run that ended with the dot-com implosion in early 2000.

With the current bull market celebrating its eighth birthday, we thought it would be fun to collect eight facts about the market, and other things people care about, that help illustrate what’s happened since then.

U.S. STOCKS

Anyone with a strong enough stomach to have held on through the market’s ups and downs over the past eight years has been handsomely rewarded. A $10,000 investment on March 9, 2009, in Vanguard’s Total

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Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6340.