The bull market of the 1980s and 1990s is the stuff dreams are made of.1
The S&P 500 was up nearly 18% per year over the course of those two decades.2
It’s one of the great bull markets in history.
But if we want to get picky, the bull market didn’t truly start until 1982. There were back-to-back recessions in 1980 and 1981-82. You had a 17% correction in 1980 along with a near-30% bear market that bottomed in 1982.
From the August 1982 bottom, which coincides with Paul Volcker declaring inflation was finally kicked, through the end of 1999, the S&P 500 was up an impressive 20% per year.
Now here’s the crazy part — the current bull market isn’t that far behind that epic run!
Take a look at how the bull market from the bottom in March 2009 stacks up against the 1980s and 1990s rager:
It’s much closer than you thought, right? I’ll admit, it’s closer than I expected.
From the GFC lows, the S&P 500 is now up almost 17% per year. So it’s not quite there but an AI-induced bubble could certainly get us there.
That previous bull market finished with a bang as the dot-com bubble took off at the end of the 1990s. From 1995-1999, the S&P 500 was up 37%, 23%, 33%, 28% and 21% in successive years.
That helped take it from a bull market to ludicrous speed.
Could we see that again if AI is as big as all of the tech luminaries claim? Maybe.
There are other similarities as well.
The 1987 crash saw the stock market fall 34% in a week. The Covid crash saw the market fall 34% over the course of a month.
And there was a soft landing in 1995 after the Fed
