text: 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. 
   
   ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. ||||| 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.” ||||| 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. ||||| If investors took a leap of faith when the bottom fell out of the market eight years ago and invested heavily in Dow stocks, most would be sitting on a fairly sizeable nest egg today. 
   
   The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.08% is a benchmark of 30 large U.S. companies and generally serves as a barometer of broader market conditions; among investors here and abroad, the blue-chip average is synonymous with the U.S. stock market, period. 
   
   Since the dark days of March 2009 when the Dow was barely holding onto 6,500 points, the index has soared a little more than 200%, mostly on the back of loose monetary policy from the Federal Reserve and other foreign central banks in the wake of the 2008-2009 financial crisis. During the same period, gold only rose 30.8%, while crude oil gained 17.5%. 
   
   Compared with stocks in Europe and Asia, the Dow is clearly an overachiever. The Stoxx Europe 600 Euro SXXP, -0.02% climbed 138%, the U.K’s FTSE 100 UKX, +0.62% advanced 108%, China’s Shanghai Composite SHCOMP, +0.14% added 50% and Japan’s Nikkei NIK, +0.45% rose 175% during the same time frame. 
   
   Among the Dow components remaining from 2009, Home Depot Inc. HD, +0.16% is the undisputed star, soaring 608%, while American Express Co. AXP, -0.08% and Walt Disney Co. DIS, +0.75% both surged more than 500%. 
   
   Seven companies have joined the Dow after the bull market began its epic climb, doing their share to fuel the Dow’s bullish run. UnitedHealth Group Inc. UNH, +0.45% jumped 752% since the beginning of the bull market and Visa Inc. V, -0.48% skyrocketed 524%. Apple Inc. AAPL, -1.11% the youngest member of the blue-chip family, has shot up nearly 1,000% since 2009, although it rose only 9.3% since it became a Dow component two years ago. 
   
   Newcomers on the Dow 
   
   Stock Returns since March 2009 Date added to the Dow Returns since inclusion in the Dow Cisco Systems Inc. 136% June 8, 2009 72% Travelers Cos. 245% June 8, 2009 179% United Health Group Inc. 752% Sept. 24, 2012 201% Goldman Sachs Group Inc. 176% Sept. 23, 2013 53% Nike Inc. 457% Sept. 23, 2013 65% Visa Inc. 524% Sept. 23, 2013 81% Apple Inc. 989% March 19, 2015 9.3% Source: FactSet 
   
   Yet, not all Dow stocks have posted such stellar returns. Oil major Exxon Mobil Corp. XOM, +0.07% has risen a paltry 23% while its competitor Chevron Corp. CVX, +1.02% rose 87%. 
   
   International Business Machines Corp. IBM, -0.11% Procter & Gamble Co. PG, +0.10% Verizon Communications Inc. VZ, +0.53% and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. WMT, +0.64% have also posted comparatively lackluster returns. 
   
   Only a handful of companies have been booted from the Dow since 2009—AT&T Inc. T, +0.74% Bank of America Corp. BAC, +1.13% Alcoa Corp. AA, +0.01% Citigroup Inc. C, +0.74% General Motors Co. GM, +0.53% Kraft Heinz Co. KHC, -0.22% and HP Inc. HPQ, -1.49% Of the seven, Bank of America and Citigroup have outperformed their Dow peers Goldman Sachs GS, +0.04% and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. JPM, +0.11% although AT&T ‘s T, +0.74% 77% came up short of Verizon Communications Inc.’s VZ, +0.53% 87% gains. Alcoa Corp. AA, +0.01% replaced by Nike Inc. NKE, +0.15% in September 2013, is up 77%. 
   
   Data on GM, Kraft, and HP were not available due to mergers, spinoffs and in GM’s case, a government bailout following the 2008 financial crisis. ||||| 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 Skip in Skip x Embed x Share See what could jeopardize the second-longest bull market in Wall Street history. USA TODAY NETWORK 
   
   This file photo taken on Dec. 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) 
   
   Forget the doubters. The numbers don’t lie. This Wall Street bull’s got game. 
   
   The rising market for stocks, which turns 8 on March 9, might finally have silenced critics who questioned its staying power. 
   
   From a statistical perspective, this market's no slouch. It has posted big enough returns to rank No. 4 all-time in terms of performance, with the mega-bull run from the 1990s taking top honors with a gain of 417%, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. The current market can’t be faulted for a lack of endurance, either, as only one bull has lasted longer. 
   
   It has also generated more than $21 trillion in new stock market wealth. 
   
   The star stock of this bull run? Incyte (INCY), a biotech firm whose shares have gained more than all others in the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index. The drug company is a Wall Street favorite for its dominant bone marrow treatment, Jakafi, and its loaded pipeline of potential drugs. The bull’s biggest dud? Southwestern Energy (SWN), a victim of a price crash in oil. 
   
   The best-performing group of companies the past eight years can thank U.S. shoppers. The consumer discretionary sector, which includes home improvement retailer Home Depot, coffee shop Starbucks and athletic apparel and sneaker giant Nike, has benefited from an improving economy and people’s willingness to buy things not deemed necessities. The energy sector was the biggest laggard, which is no surprise given plummeting earnings for hard-hit companies in that industry. 
   
   Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2lsIuIr ||||| 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. 
   
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   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.”
target: – 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.