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. “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. 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.
– 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.