If the bull market is worried about dying, it’s not letting on. 
 
 Eight years along and no existential crisis plagues this advance, whose unbroken march from the depths of the Great Recession is the second longest ever. Valuations are stretched and going by its age the rally is in rarefied air. But volatility, the ticker tape of investor anxiety, is nowhere to be found. 
 
 So profound is the market’s peace that a debate is raging over whether it’s healthy: are investors willfully blinding themselves to danger in the era of Donald Trump? Whether they are, the result has been manna for anyone who’s held on. Almost $3 trillion has been added to equity values since November. 
 
 “Investors should now be on the lookout for a fear-of-missing-out mindset that could signal overconfidence and sound the final lap,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA in New York. “Volatility will remain a potential challenge to the intestinal fortitude of many investors and cause their emotions to become their portfolio’s worst enemy.” 
 
 At 250 percent, the advance in the S&P 500 Index since 2009 has surpassed any bull market at the eight-year mark, plus all those that ended earlier, according to data compiled by CFRA that goes back to World War II. While history shows stocks tend to get more volatile as rallies drag on, it’s not the case now. In the past 12 months, the S&P 500 has spent only 23 days rising or falling 1 percent, compared with 85 days during the eighth year of the 1990-2000 run. 
 
 The bull market, driven by easy monetary policy from central banks and a doubling in corporate profits, shows few signs of waning as it heads into its ninth year. Since Trump’s election in November, the S&P 500 has jumped 11 percent, going 55 days without an intraday swing of 1 percent, the longest since at least 1982. The index added 0.2 percent at 9:50 a.m. in New York. 
 
 Is it good or bad when markets surge without volatility? On trading desks around Wall Street last week, charts surfaced purporting to show that “complacency” is at a record high by dividing the S&P 500’s price-earnings ratio of about 22 by the CBOE Volatility Index, now near 11. The quotient exceeded levels during the dot-com bubble. 
 
 Even the Fed has noticed the lack of turbulence. In the minutes from the central bank’s last meeting, a few officials “ expressed concern that the low level of implied volatility in equity markets appeared inconsistent with the considerable uncertainty attending the outlook” for Trump to deliver on pro-growth agenda. 
 
 To Michael Shaoul, chief executive officer of Marketfield Asset Management in New York, neither P/E nor the VIX is useful in determining a market top on its own -- and it makes no more sense to look at a combination of the two. 
 
 “This idea can be summed up by the old term ‘two wrongs don’t make a right,”’ Shaoul said in an interview. “We can complain that valuations are no longer appealing and that the steady staircase-like move is unnerving, but we cannot say that these factors in themselves mean the end is nigh.” 
 
 Steady gains have coaxed investors back to stocks. They poured $60 billion into American equity ETFs and mutual funds in the last four months, an amount recorded only twice over any similar stretch in this bull market, data compiled by Investment Company Institute and Bloomberg show. From 2009 to 2016, withdrawals exceeded $200 billion. 
 
 Investors may be forgiven for their reluctance to embrace equities. While the market ruptures that followed Britain’s June vote to exit the European Union and Trump’s November election proved temporary, they were among the five instances in just two years of what Deutsche Bank AG categorizes as an extreme shift in equity volatility. Before that, it took two decades to record five such events. 
 
 And the current tranquility does appear to be a bit out of touch with history. In an average bull market, the number of days with 1 percent move usually more than doubles to 65 in year seven after falling in the first three years. During the Internet boom, the only post-war bull market that lasted longer than this one, year nine saw such days surge to 95. 
 
 The most important market news of the day. Get our markets daily newsletter. 
 
 While Trump’s plans to lower taxes and boost public spending may accelerate a rebound in corporate profits, anyone anticipating the peaceful advance to continue may be making a mistake, according to John Stoltzfus, chief market strategist at Oppenheimer & Co. in New York. Catalysts abound for volatility outbreaks, from Fed tightening to Trump disappointment to risks associated with the French presidential election and China’s currency policy, he wrote in March 6 note. 
 
 “The ever so unloved and disdained bull market might have more upside than even its earliest adapters and supporters project,” Stoltzfus said. But “With the transition taking place in Washington, changes in monetary policy stateside as well as upcoming elections abroad with issues around populism and nationalism, we expect the market will not show much tolerance should it detect investor complacency.” ||||| NEW YORK (Reuters) - The run of gains on Wall Street turns 8 years old on Thursday and, despite its advanced age, is expected to rage on, with perhaps a few hiccups, based on a combination of stronger company earnings, lower taxes and a corporate-friendly administration in Washington. 
 
 A trader works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., March 6, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid 
 
 Strategists, however, warn that a correction of as much as 10 percent should be expected as the market is richly valued. The bull case for equities relies on analysts seeing little chance of recession in the short term. 
 
 “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.” 
 
 The S&P 500 index has rallied 250 percent since hitting a closing low of 676.53 on March 9, 2009. The gains since, uninterrupted by a decline of 20 percent or more, rank this bull market as the second longest ever. 
 
 The current run is nearly three years older than the average bull and more than a year shorter than the longest one: the rally from Oct. 11, 1990 to March 24, 2000. 
 
 The S&P continued to rise through a year-long decline in corporate earnings through most of 2016, supported in part by historically low interest rates which made stocks comparatively cheaper and more rewarding than U.S. Treasuries. 
 
 The index has risen nearly 6 percent in 2017, closing on Wednesday at 2,362.98. Analysts remain undeterred in their belief that more gains are coming as the economy and corporate earnings growth improve. 
 
 "With earnings growth expected to continue the rest of the year, it might be a rocky road but it could still be that the bull market makes it to nine," said Ryan Detrick, senior market strategist at LPL Financial in Charlotte, North Carolina. 
 
 Infographic ID: '2n9BKfK' 
 
 A Reuters poll in December showed analysts expected the S&P 500 to finish 2017 at 2,350, buoyed by the belief that President Donald Trump’s plans to stimulate the economy with infrastructure spending, lower taxes and financial deregulation would come to pass. 
 
 Strategists, including some with a lower target than that, see the bull market continuing, even if a correction is in the cards. 
 
 Julian Emanuel, executive director of U.S. equity and derivatives strategy at UBS Securities, said he expects a pullback of 5 to 10 percent to “refresh” the bull market and that such a correction would be a buying opportunity. 
 
 “The bull market is going to finish, in our view, when conditions begin to accumulate that tend to lead to a recession. We just don’t see that as a 2017 or 2018 event,” Emanuel said. 
 
 He warned, however, that “valuations have outrun earnings potential and the state of fundamentals generally.” 
 
 With the S&P 500 currently trading at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of about 18, well above its average of 15, corporate profits will need to improve in order to bring down valuations. 
 
 Earnings are seen growing 10.7 percent this year compared to last, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S data. Even though that is a lower expectation than the 12.5 percent estimate at the start of January, it still allows for a healthy gain in 2017. 
 
 U.S. economic data, including a private sector jobs report on Wednesday that showed growth recorded its biggest increase in more than a year in February, continues to improve and is far from indicating a downturn, further supporting stock prices. 
 
 “We do not yet see any of the warning signs that point to a larger decline,” said Kingsview’s Nolte, who sees a pullback of up to 5 percent. “A recession does not seem to be in the cards just yet.” ||||| LISTEN TO ARTICLE 5:18 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Share Tweet Post Email 
 
 You’ve probably heard: it’s the longest bull market ever. You’ve probably also heard: no it isn’t. What’s the story? 
 
 According to a loose consensus, bull markets are rallies that go beyond 20 percent and are never interrupted by a 20 percent fall. In many corners of Wall Street, that means the S&P 500 rally that began in March 2009 will surpass all that went before it on Wednesday. 
 
 Here’s the issue: the definitions aren’t chiseled in stone. They’re not laws of nature -- it’s not even totally clear where they come from. The 20 percent threshold strikes people as arbitrary, spurious, an invention. Pundits disagree on everything from the role of psychology in defining market eras to how strict you should be about the parameters for past ones. 
 
 Several objections pertain to measurement. One is how to date the rally this one supposedly supplants -- the dot-com bubble. Traditionally, statisticians have placed the start of the tech rally in October 1990, the bottom of a slide in the S&P 500 that got very close to 20 percent but not all the way. If you refuse to call that 19.92 percent drop a 20 percent drop, the advance gets longer, and today’s would need a thousand more days to exceed it. 
 
 “If you round the data, you’re going to get a certain number of bull markets. If you don’t round, you’re going to get a different number,” Justin Walters, co-founder of Bespoke Investment Group LLC, said by phone. “If you want to do that, that’s fine, but it’s not using the standard 20 percent definition.” 
 
 When a tradition coalesces on Wall Street, it’s hard to dislodge. The best argument for considering 1990 a break in a bull run is probably that much of the old guard considers it so. Different researchers give different verdicts -- sometimes at the same shop. For better or worse, those eight 100ths of a point have been glossed over by history, leaving the 1990s run to begin in 1990. 
 
 Another analytical point: Who cares? Equities have been in good shape for years -- maybe leave it at that. The stock market isn’t a geometry project, skeptics note, it’s a tool for capital formation, something people depend on for retirement. What difference does it make if the chart hews to a pattern in which declines of 20.1 percent matter and 19.9 percent don’t? 
 
 “We like records, we like round numbers, it’s a concept we like to talk about and tweet about,” Charlie Bilello, director of research at Pension Partners LLC, said by phone. “But no one in his right mind would use this as an investment strategy.” 
 
 Another objection, one pertaining to the custom of dating bull markets from trough to peak, looked less relevant Tuesday after the S&P 500 jumped above its record close from January. The concern had been that as long as the index held below its all-time high, it was impossible to say for sure that the rally was intact. Should it hold above that level at the close, the point would become moot. 
 
 Here’s a rundown of other ways that people say 3,452 days without a 20 percent decline do not a bull market make. 
 
 Where to Start? 
 
 It’s been nine years, five months and 12 days since the S&P 500 hit a 13-year low on March 9, 2009, the date considered by many to be the start of the equity recovery. Not so fast, say skeptics. According to them, a bull market begins not when the stocks reach a bottom, but after an interval of recovery --like when the market breaches its previous high. Viewed like this, the bull market started on Feb. 19, 2013, when the S&P surpassed an October 2007 high. 
 
 “I will not be popping the champagne for the bull market on Aug. 22,” said Jeffrey Hirsch, editor of the Stock Trader’s Almanac. “Everyone’s hung up on the record. It’s more nuanced than that.” 
 
 Intraday Rout 
 
 Several gripes pertains to how you calculate a 20 percent drop. Adherents of this view note that, fine, the recovery that started two months after Barack Obama took office hasn’t had a 20 percent decline when measured close to close. But it has had one when measured by the highest and lowest levels recorded during the trading day. Between May and October 2011, the S&P 500 plunged 22 percent on an intraday basis. Just because it skirted the definition based on where it landed at 4 p.m. shouldn’t matter to sensible people. 
 
 “There is a lot of sloppy data or historical revisionism or both,” said Mark Hulbert, an editor at Hulbert Financial Digest. “People just blithely assume that that bull market started on March 9, 2009. Depending on who you talk to, there have been one or two bear markets that occurred in that period.” 
 
 Global Selloff 
 
 A 20 percent selloff is painful, but investors can suffer worse fates. So goes a line of thinking that looks at the long, barren period U.S. markets went through around the time of the yuan devaluation in 2015. Even though the drop never exceeded 15 percent, the S&P 500 went through two 10 percent corrections and more than half its members sustained a 20 percent plunge. A gauge of small-cap companies retreated 27 percent between May 2015 and February 2016 while energy companies lost 30 percent in the span. 
 
 “I don’t care what a textbook says, that was a bear market,” said Michael Batnick, director of research at Ritholtz Wealth Management. “It wasn’t just that stock prices were going down, but businesses were in trouble, we had an earnings recession and energy prices were collapsing. That to me is a clear sign of a recession.” ||||| CLOSE It took years for the Dow to climb to 19K, but in just months it has soared to 22K and isn't slowing down. USA TODAY 
 
 This file photo taken on December 8, 2016 shows the Wall Street Bull sculpture in the Financial District in New York. (AFP PHOTO / Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty Images) (Photo: BRYAN R. SMITH, AFP/Getty Images) 
 
 The Dow hit a fresh milestone Wednesday, cracking the 22,000 barrier for the first time in its 121-year history. 
 
 So-called "Dow 22K" is the latest sign that the stock market's long climb that began in March 2009 and that has gained momentum this year amid a global economic recovery continues to charge ahead. 
 
 The Dow topped 22,000 minutes into the trading session, climbed as high as 22,036.10 before closing up 52 points, or 0.24%, at 22,016.24. The Dow's first-ever close above 22,000 was fueled by a 4.7% advance and record high finish for iPhone maker Apple, which reported strong earnings late Tuesday. 
 
 The latest milestone for the blue-chip stock gauge, which includes iconic U.S. companies such as Boeing, Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Johnson & Johnson, ignited a fresh debate on Wall Street as to whether the stock price run-up has more room to go or if a market peak is nearing. 
 
 The Dow Jones industrial average has gained 11.4% this year. It is up 236% since its bear market low of 6547.05, which means a $10,000 investment would be worth $33,600 now. 
 
 Joe Quinlan, chief market strategist at New York-based U.S. Trust, downplayed the significance of the Dow's latest 1,000-point climb. The reason? It represents just a 4.3% gain since it topped 21,000 on March 1. 
 
 What would worry Quinlan, however, would be if investors on Wall Street and Main Street get overly excited and start to pile into the market and quickly push the Dow up another 3,000 points. 
 
 "Chatter about Dow 25,000 would worry me," he says, calling it "a sign of a market top" and "too much exuberance." 
 
 Related: 
 
 It took the Dow 154 calendar days to climb from 21,000 to 22,000, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. In contrast, it took the Dow 2,119 days -- or nearly six years -- to jump from 14,000 to 15,000 due to the Dow's more than 50% plunge during the 2007 to 2009 bear market. 
 
 The Dow's advance is being powered by better business conditions, recovering economies and improving corporate profits in the U.S. and overseas. 
 
 Stock market optimists say the Dow's current rally is based on improving sales and revenues for U.S. companies and not irrational exuberance like the dot-com stock hysteria back in 2000. 
 
 "Don't let the milestones cause you to miss the simple underlying story: corporate earnings are at all-time highs. So stocks are at all-time highs," says Donald Luskin, chief investment officer at TrendMacro in Chicago. That's how it is supposed to work, he adds. 
 
 CLOSE Following an announcement about legislation to overhaul the U.S. immigration system, President Donald Trump touted the record high of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, saying "we picked up four trillion dollars in net worth." (Aug. 2) AP 
 
 A weakening dollar against a basket of foreign currencies is also helping boost profits at big U.S. companies like McDonald's and Boeing that do a lot of business abroad. That's because it makes their products more affordable when purchased with stronger currencies. The Federal Reserve's patient approach to raising interest rates -- which are still near historic lows -- is also providing support for stocks. 
 
 Stocks "can work their way higher, maybe much higher" if interest rates stay very low and central banks around the world continue to provide stimulus to markets, adds David Kotok, chief investment officer at Cumberland Advisors, an investment firm based in Sarasota, Fla. 
 
 Milestones are fun to celebrate, but they don't necessarily tell you where the market is headed next, says Lindsey Bell, an investment strategist at CFRA, a market research firm in New York. 
 
 "I don't think it foretells the next leg of the market," says Bell. 
 
 Risks still remain. The Dow, in addition to getting pricey relative to the earnings streams of its 30 components, also faces potential risk from the inability of Washington lawmakers to work together and get things done, Bell says. The delay in getting many of President Trump's economic agenda items passed through Congress could also weigh on stocks, as a lack of tax cuts and infrastructure spending could curtail growth, Bell adds. Potential budgetary gridlock in coming months could also spook investors. 
 
 Critics of the Dow's recent assault of 22,000 note that it is a "price-weighted" index -- which means its up and down moves are driven largely by its most expensive stocks -- which distorts the true health of the index and the broader market. 
 
 For example, Boeing, which is now the Dow's highest-priced name at $237.95 per share, soared nearly 25% in July and had surged more than 14% in the four trading days after its strong earnings report on July 26 -- accounting for a big chunk of the Dow's gains in its final run to 22,000. The shares slipped less than 1% Wednesday. 
 
 "The Dow is a flawed index where price matters and nothing else," says Mark Arbeter, president of Arbeter Investments, a Holland, Pa., firm that analyzes the health of the market by stock chart patterns, trading volume and trendlines. In the past six trading days, the Dow has risen 403 points. Boeing accounted for 43% of that gain. 
 
 "When should an index be dominated by one stock? Never," says Arbeter. 
 
 Investors should also never get overly confident, no matter how strong the stock market is acting, warns U.S. Trust's Quinlan. 
 
 "Investors tend to forget about risk levels as markets hit new highs every session," says Quinlan. 
 
 Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2wlFU8a ||||| Thursday marks eight years since the low point of the last bear market on Wall Street. On March 9, 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 6,547.05. Since then, it has more than tripled. If you’d invested twenty thousand dollars in the Dow index eight years ago, it would now be worth about sixty-four thousand dollars. 
 
 The vast majority of the market’s gains came while Barack Obama was President, but since Donald Trump was elected the Dow has tacked on more than twenty-five hundred points, or about twelve per cent. Last week, it closed above twenty-one thousand for the first time, and we also saw the I.P.O. of Snap , the social-media company that owns Snapchat . At the end of Snap’s first day of trading, the market placed a notional valuation on the firm, which has always operated at a loss, of thirty-four billion dollars. “Since November 8th, Election Day, the Stock Market has posted $3.2 trillion in GAINS and consumer confidence is at a 15 year high. Jobs!” Trump boasted on Twitter . 
 
 Looking at numbers like these, many people’s reaction is to try to get in on the action. Since October, about seventy-five billion dollars of new money has flowed into U.S. equity funds and exchange-traded funds, according to figures from the Investment Company Institute. Evidently, investors believe that Trump can keep the bull market going. 
 
 They might be proved right—but I doubt it. That’s not an opinion driven by my animus toward Trump’s politics, or even my belief that investors are ignoring the economic and financial risks inherent in having a man like him in the White House. (My colleague James Surowiecki wrote recently about the business world’s view of Trump as a risky but not completely uncertain bet.) My skepticism about stocks is primarily based on nonpolitical factors: valuation, monetary policy, and herding behavior—all of which can play key roles in driving the market. 
 
 I’m not arguing that we are in a full-on speculative bubble of the sort we saw in stocks during the late nineteen-nineties and in the housing and mortgage markets during the early two-thousands. Although the stratospheric valuation placed on Snap last week should be seen as a warning sign—in the past few days, the company’s stock has fallen back—it can’t be compared to the rash of dot-com I.P.O.s in 1999, or the proliferation of “liar loans” in the mortgage market between 2004 and 2007. Still, the price-to-earnings ratio of the S. & P. 500 index, which is perhaps the most widely followed valuation metric, now stands at more than twenty-six. 
 
 That’s not as high as it was during the late nineteen-nineties, but it exceeds the levels seen during any other bull market since the Second World War. Other valuation measures, such as Robert Shiller’s cyclically adjusted P/E ratio, and the late James Tobin’s “Q ratio”—which measures the price of investment assets relative to their replacement cost—are also emitting warning signals. Andrew Smithers, an investment analyst who tracks both of these metrics closely, wrote recently , “Although the overvaluation of the stock market is well short of the extremes reached at the year ends of 1929 and 1999, it is near its other previous peaks of 1905, 1936, and 1968.” 
 
 Stock-market bulls respond to this type of analysis with two counterarguments. First: with interest rates at very low levels, stocks still represent better value than bonds and other interest-bearing investments. Second: even overvalued markets can sometimes rise a lot further before they go pop. 
 
 Regarding the first argument, there can be no doubt that one of the primary drivers of the bull market has been the Federal Reserve’s determination to keep the cost of borrowing very low. But the Fed is now raising interest rates, and it may well be about to step up the pace of monetary tightening. At their policymaking meeting next week, Janet Yellen, the Fed chair, and her colleagues are widely expected to raise the federal funds rate by a quarter point. Based upon recent projections from the Fed, it looks like there will be at least another two additional hikes before the year is out. 
 
 Rising interest rates don’t necessarily presage lower stock prices, but the two things have often gone together. They did in the mid two-thousands, the late nineteen-nineties, the late seventies, and the late sixties. The early nineties were an exception—one that can be explained by an unexpected surge in productivity and G.D.P. growth, which, in turn, boosted corporate profits. To be sure, something like this could happen again: Trump is promising as much. But looking at the already low unemployment rate (4.8 per cent) and weak productivity figures, few economists think a sustained growth spurt is likely. 
 
 Why, then, is the market still going up? Undoubtedly, there is a “Trump factor.” Many billionaire hedge-fund managers have welcomed the President’s promise of lower taxes and less regulation. “If nothing else happens, that releases animal spirits,” David Tepper, the head of the hedge fund Appaloosa Management, told CNBC on Wednesday. In the current environment of decent growth, low inflation, and pro-business policies, Tepper added, investors “can’t be short.” 
 
 That last comment, I suspect, is the real key to the market’s buoyancy. Professional investors are buying stocks because others are buying, and they fear that if they deviate from this pattern they will be punished. (George Soros was punished late last year, when he shorted the market and, reportedly, lost a billion dollars .) Keynes warned us that herding behavior can drive markets far from reasonable valuations, and that the mispricing can last for a considerable period. Referring to short sellers who try to make money by selling high-priced stocks, he is reputed to have said, “The market can stay irrational for longer than you can stay solvent.” 
 
 It is folly, then, to predict what will happen on Wall Street tomorrow, next week, or next month. With many investors still upbeat, stock prices could rise further for a time. Eventually, however, overvalued markets do correct and revert to levels justified by economic fundamentals. When that happens, it is seldom pretty. There is no reason to believe things will be different this time. ||||| CLOSE If you haven't started investing yet, these tips will help get you on the right track for retirement. USA TODAY 
 
 Dow Power: Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 13, 2017. (Photo: BRYAN R. SMITH, AFP/Getty Images) 
 
 The Dow briefly topped 23,000 for the first time in its 121-year history Tuesday, but closed just shy of the milestone despite notching its 50th record close of the year and extending a bull market rally that began nearly nine years ago. 
 
 This year has been full of milestones for the Dow Jones industrial average. The blue-chip stock gauge has rallied more than 3,200 points, gained more than 16% and leapfrogged 20,000, 21,000, 22,000 and 23,000 in 2017. 
 
 The strong rally has been driven, Wall Street pros say, by a financial rarity: Economies in every corner of the globe picking up at the same time. 
 
 "Dow 23,000 is something to cheer," says Thorne Perkin, president of New York-based money-management firm Papamarkou Wellner Asset Management. 
 
 The Dow topped its newest milestone in morning trading, climbing as high as 23,002.20 before retreating. It closed up 40.48 points, or 0.18%, to 22,997.44. It took just 76 days to climb from 22,000 to 23,000, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. 
 
 The new high could lure more Main Street investors into the market, says Sameer Samana, global quantitative and technical strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute. 
 
 Still, he says investors must be mindful that stocks have been rallying a long time and have appreciated an awful lot already. 
 
 "We've come a long way from the crisis lows (in March 2009), and investors should make sure their allocations to stocks are not being driven by backwards-looking performance and psychological milestones," Samana warned. 
 
 More: Stocks: Would Dow 23,000 inspire retreat or rally on Wall St? 
 
 More: 4 earnings trends that could impact your 401(k) 
 
 More: Why the Dow won't be haunted by an October market crash this year 
 
 The Dow's rise has been driven by five key factors: 
 
 1. Economies everywhere are rebounding 
 
 Everywhere you look around the globe, economic growth is ticking higher. It's not just the U.S. growing its GDP these days. Europe's economy is in rebound mode. So is Japan's. And emerging markets are in better shape as commodity prices rebound amid a weakening U.S. dollar. 
 
 Last week, the International Monetary Fund upped its global GDP forecast to 3.6% this year and 3.7% next year, up slightly from its July forecast. It's hard for stocks to get derailed if there's scant signs of a recession on the horizon anywhere on earth. 
 
 Wall Street is reacting to a "synchronized global recovery," says Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial. "The first we have seen in a decade." 
 
 2. U.S. companies are making lots of money 
 
 Corporate America posted 10%-plus profit growth in the first two quarters of the year, something CEOs haven't been able to brag about since 2011. Profit growth is seen slowing in the third quarter to around 4.4%, and more than 80% of the 45 companies in the S&P 500 stock index that have reported results so far have topped expectations, according to earnings-tracker Thomson Reuters. Wall Street analysts expect a pickup in the final quarter of 2017 and next year. 
 
 "Some of the best numbers we've seen in a long time," Perkin says. 
 
 3. Cheap money remains plentiful 
 
 Markets love liquidity, a term used to describe lots of money sloshing around in global markets that can be used to buy stocks, bonds, and other assets. And borrowing costs around the globe remain low — and are likely to stay that way for a while longer — despite the U.S. Federal Reserve signaling a third rate hike this year at its December meeting. 
 
 In fact, the world's top central bankers, speaking this past weekend at a banking conference in Washington, said that due to tame inflation, they may need to keep their crisis-driven stimulus policies in place longer. 
 
 Global central banks in places such as Europe and Japan "remain committed to providing liquidity," Krosby says, noting that central banks are now holding roughly $13 trillion worth of assets that they purchased as a way to get cash circulating in markets around the world. 
 
 4. Tax cut hopes not dead 
 
 President Trump has had few legislative triumphs since taking office in January, but investors are placing better odds on his recent tax cut proposal getting passed by Congress in coming months. A tax cut for corporations will mean more of their revenue will end up as profit. 
 
 "Investors in the U.S," Krosby says, "see the chance of tax cuts at 50/50." 
 
 Adds Douglas Cote, chief market strategist for Voya Investment Management: "Looming tax cuts will be icing on the cake." 
 
 5. U.S. companies with global reach in sweet spot 
 
 Companies such as Boeing, Apple and McDonald's that sell a lot of airplanes, smart phones and fast food abroad are benefiting from a profitable one-two punch of a weaker dollar and stronger foreign economies. 
 
 The weak dollar makes U.S. products cheaper when purchased with appreciating foreign currencies, and sales get an added boost from the fact shoppers around the world are doing better and have more money to spend. 
 
 Says Perkin: "We believe the U.S. equity market remains the best place to be." 
 
 Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2x3i8P3 ||||| 8 Things to Know about the Bull Market on Its 8th Birthday 
 
 The stock market has accomplished something that only one other bull market in history has achieved — it survived to see its eighth birthday. 
 
 It was eight years ago today that the Dow Jones industrial average sank to its recent nadir of 6,547, as hundreds of thousands of workers were losing jobs and the global financial system teetered on the edge of collapse. 
 
 Since then, though, the Dow has skyrocketed more than 14,000 points to 20,855. The broader S&P 500 index of U.S. stocks has come roaring back too, returning an annual 20% to investors who had the nerve to stay in the scary market. 
 
 But this was by no means a straight shot back up. In fact, the second-longest bull market in the post-World War II era has been unpredictable, puzzling, and rather peculiar. 
 
 Here's how: 
 
 1. This Bull Has Been Unloved 
 
 "The current bull market has been the least loved, the most questioned and the most doubted bull that we certainly can recall in near 34 years of experience in the markets," noted Oppenheimer chief investment strategist John Stoltzfus in a recent report. 
 
 That's an understatement. 
 
 Even as this bull market more than tripled the value of stocks over the past eight years, the percent of households that actually own equities has sunk from 62% in 2008 to 52% last year, according to a survey by Gallup . 
 
 That's the lowest level of stock ownership in the 19 years that Gallup has been tracking this data. 
 
 2. This Bull Has Been Persistent 
 
 World events since 2009 have been anything but supportive for a major stock market rally. Major industries such as banks and automakers neared collapse. The Federal government shutdown for 16 days. And political posturing in Congress in the Obama years brought the nation close to defaulting on the national debt. 
 
 Overseas, major European nations were crippled by a debt crisis, terrorists attacks spread around the globe, and China's economy endured a dramatic slump. 
 
 Yet stocks kept chugging along. 
 
 3. This Bull Was Nearly Gored Last Year 
 
 Since President Trump's election in November, the stock market has been on a a roll, as most major economic metrics have been pointing higher. So it's easy to forget that as recently as a year ago, there was real doubt that equities would make it to this anniversary. 
 
 One year ago stocks were battered by a series of bad headlines, such as low growth in China and weak global demand for oil. A few months later U.K. voters decided to leave the European Union, and eventually Donald Trump was elected president — a plot twist that some analysts predicted would cause stocks to crash. 
 
 And yet stocks rebounded from their disastrous 2016 winter to deliver 22% over the past 12 months, according to CFRA, the third biggest year-over-year gain since March 2009. 
 
 4. This Bull Has Been Surprisingly Calm 
 
 Despite all of last year's uncertainty, stocks have been remarkably subdued. In fact, compared to the bull market of October 1990 to March 2000, investors could afford to take a long, deep breath for the past 12 months. 
 
 "During year eight, the S&P 500 recorded 85 [days of more than 1% gains or losses] in 1998, but only 23 in the year just past," according to CFRA's Sam Stovall. 
 
 5. This Bull Is Getting Expensive 
 
 " Most importantly for investors, both stocks and bonds are now significantly more expensive than eight years ago," says David Kelly, chief global strategist for J.P. Morgan Funds. 
 
 The current price/earnings ratio for the S&P 500 now rests at 18 based on projected profits over the coming 12 months. That's about 12% above the market's 25-year average, per Kelly. That could be a result of investors hoping that a GOP-dominated federal government will unleash billions in tax cuts and spending to jumpstart persistently lackluster post-recession economic growth. 
 
 By another P/E calculation, the market is even frothier. Based on 10 years of averaged corporate profits, the stock market's P/E now stands at 29.8. The only other times the market has been this expensive by this measure was during the dot.com bubble and the Great Depression. 
 
 6. This Bull Is Egalitarian 
 
 Different sectors of the market have experienced their own highs and lows. Financial stocks, for instance, gained 149% from March 2009 - 2010, according to CFRA, but fell 9.5% two years later, before leading the pack last year. 
 
 Two years ago sleepy, defensive-minded utility stocks earned investors the best return (14.8%), while energy companies lost big league (-16.2%). 
 
 These rough edges, though, have smoothed out over the long haul. From 2009 to 2017, there's only a 1 percentage point difference in annual returns between the top and second best sectors — consumer discretionary 25.7% vs. real estate's 24.6%. Five sectors returned between 22% to 26% per year, while the weakest performer (energy) returned a respectable 9.4%. 
 
 7. This Bull Has Gotten a Big Assist from the Fed 
 
 Normally, there's a pattern to bull markets. First, stocks rise, foreshadowing a rebound in economic growth. Then once the economy actually gets into gear, the Federal Reserve starts to tap on the brakes by raising interest rates to make sure the economy — and inflation — don't overheat. 
 
 The cumulative effect of Fed rate hikes are often what helps bring about the end to bull markets. 
 
 This time around, though, the Fed has kept interest rates at historically low levels throughout the eight years of this bull. The Fed has lifted rates only two times throughout this entire rally — each time by a mere quarter of a percentage point. 
 
 But that may change as the Fed is expected to lift rates next week. 
 
 8. This Bull Will Turn 9 
 
 This bull market has dovetailed with one of the longest business cycles in American history. But all things end, which have some worried that a recession, and stock market declines, could eventually reappear. 
 
 But old age would be the wrong cause of death, should it occur. 
 
 "Bull markets don’t die of old age, they die of fright," says Stovall. 
 
 Which means there has to be something to cause investors to sell en masse and move their money into safer assets. And usually that involves concerns over negative economic growth, i.e. recessions. 
 
 So will the economy contract in 2017? 
 
 It doesn't appear likely. Demand for automobiles and homes remain strong, and the Fed has signaled multiple times that it believes the economy is strong enough to endure higher interest rates. 
 
 But that doesn't mean you should expect prices to rise forever, or at least as much as they have in the recent past. 
 
 "With earnings growing more slowly, dividend yields and bond coupons low, and the potential for P/E ratios and real yields to mean revert, a traditional 60/40 U.S. stock/bond portfolio could well generate returns over the next five years that are less than half the roughly 8% annualized gain that such a portfolio provided over the past 25 years," says Kelly. ||||| No one can predict when the current bull market will end. But we can all agree on when began, right? 
 
 
 
 You might think so, but no. 
 
 
 
 By the most commonly accepted definition, the bull market in stocks that followed the 'Great Recession' and global financial crisis turns eight years old Thursday. On Monday, March 9, 2009, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index closed at 676, having touched 666 the prior Friday, and then reversed higher. 
 
 By the standard custom for classifying bull and bear markets, this rebound became a new bull market once it gained 20 percent – just two weeks later. And those unwritten rules say that this bull market remains in force unless and until the S&P declines at least 20 percent from a high. 
 
 That has not happened since March 2009, which is why this 250-percent advance is still generally considered one, long bull market – the second-longest ever, in fact. 
 
 Yet plenty of professional investors and longtime students of the market argue that dating the bull market to the initial snap-back rally from a 12-year low overlooks some of the setbacks since then and perhaps overstates the bull's age. 
 
 Here are some alternative start dates commonly cited by those who think the bull market truly got rolling well after the tumultuous swings around the financial-crisis climax: 
 
 Source: CNBC 
 
 September 2011: In a sort of financial-crisis aftershock, stress in European debt markets, surging oil prices and a U.S. debt-ceiling standoff struck a still-fragile economic recovery and dragged the S&P 500 down 19.4 percent from May to September that year. The decline exceeded 20 percent on an intraday basis and most global indexes suffered declines of at least that much. 
 
 The record keepers file this under the heading of "severe market correction," but to many it was close enough to consider the recovery from the September 2011 akin to a new, or renewed, bull market. 
 
 March 2013: In some respects, this equity advance didn't begin to behave as a real bull market until late 2012. Treasury yields had bottomed in mid-2012, and riskier assets benefited from the unclenching of tensions that this represented. Risk spreads on speculative high-yield debt began collapsing, and for the first time in this economic cycle, the price-earnings multiple on stocks began expanding. 
 
 By early 2013, with Washington gridlocked, the Federal Reserve looking to end quantitative easing and equities appearing cheap relative to bonds, the S&P gained upward momentum. By late March 2013, the index finally eclipsed its former all-time high from October 2007 of 1565. 
 
 
 
 Some strategists say this was the end of the "secular bear market" that had begun in the year 2000 and the start of a new "secular bull market." The term "secular" refers to a long-term structural move in asset prices. An earlier secular bear lasted from 1966 to 1982, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was contained below the 1000 market, followed by the stupendous secular bull of 1982 to 2000. 
 
 Obviously within these periods are significant cyclical swings, often of more than 20 percent against the long-term trend. 
 
 There's no real science to defining or playing such periods. And, frankly, there have been so few that it's hard to generalize about their behavior with too much confidence. 
 
 But the idea that a push to a new all-time high touches off a decade-plus of further upward movement has some evidence behind it, and the likes of Bank of America Merrill Lynch have been using this framework since the 2013 breakout. 
 
 February 2016: The S&P 500 fell "only" about 15 percent from the summer of 2015 to the early-2016 low as oil prices collapsed and global recession and deflation fears flared. 
 
 
 
 Yet that understates the carnage beneath the surface. The small-cap Russell 2000 sank 26 percent over eight months. And Strategas Research technical strategist Chris Verrone notes that 63 percent of the stocks in the S&P 500 index fell at least 20 percent from their 52-week high. 
 
 So, bear market or not, it was a pretty good washout - one that many now argue cleansed the market of excesses, rebuilt value and reinvigorated the bull. In some ways this is akin to the Asian financial crisis of 1998, when the S&P 500 never fell by more than 20 percent but 70 percent of all stocks did. Once it bottomed, that bull market put in a ferociously lucrative final push over the next 18 months. 
 
 So how much does this matter for an investor trying to set expectations for future equity performance? 
 
 Not terribly much. Even if we say the bull is eight years old, and therefore a "mature" one, bull markets don't die of old age; they are put down by recession, financial panic or the Fed. 
 
 
 
 On the other hand, even if we decree that the bull market truly started five-and-a-half years, or four years ago, or 13 months ago, it doesn't change the fact that stock valuations are close to the top of their historical range and the eight-year returns delivered by the market are among the best ever. 
 
 Ryan Detrick of LPL Financial looked back at all eight-year periods since 1936. The past eight years' gain was only exceeded 35 times, placing the current run in the top four percent of all past periods. Most prior instances occurred in clusters in the mid-1950s, and then the late-'90s and early 2000. 
 
 The one-, five- and ten-year average and median returns following the other such periods aren't great – small losses one year out and subpar appreciation for longer periods. 
 
 Granted, those averages are heavily undercut by the Tech Bubble readings. But taken together, they suggest that no matter when you say the bull market began, it's certainly not over but it's probably not early.
– Thursday is a Wall Street milestone: The bull market that began on March 9, 2009, turns 8 years old, making it the second-longest such run in history. (It would need to go another year and a half or so to match the record from 1990 to 2000.) Some coverage: On this day in 2009, the S&P 500 plunged to 676. Since then, it's rallied about 250%. The Wall Street Journal has a funky graphic illustrating the near-historic run here. The Dow closed that same day at 6,547, and if you'd invested $20,000 then, it would be worth $64,000 today, notes the New Yorker. But the post has a warning: "With many investors still upbeat, stock prices could rise further for a time. Eventually, however, overvalued markets do correct and revert to levels justified by economic fundamentals." Reuters, however, suggests a bear is nowhere in sight. "The bull market is going to finish, in our view, when conditions begin to accumulate that tend to lead to a recession," says one analyst. "We just don't see that as a 2017 or 2018 event." What's unusual about the long run is what Bloomberg calls the "freakish calm" surrounding it. There's barely a whiff of volatility or investor anxiety, so much so that there's now a debate underway about whether that's healthy. One consequence of the bull run is that stocks and bonds are now quite expensive by historical standards, according to Money. It runs down that and other factoids here. The top performer in the Dow Jones Industrial Index since 2009? Home Depot, which is up more than 600%. MarketWatch looks at other winners. The star stock in the S&P has been biotech firm Incyte, notes USA Today. There's some debate on when this bull market actually began, and Michael Santoli at CNBC runs through it. Unemployment at the start of the run was 8.3%, and it's now 4.8%, per a list of key stats at Yahoo Finance.