This Bull Market Isn't Even in the Top Half. Here's the Chart That Shows It

There's a line you'll hear a lot right now, at dinner parties with your friends and by the 22 year old investment expert on Instagram: "surely this can't keep going".

The S&P 500 has been on a run since October 2022, the AI trade has minted a handful of trillion-dollar companies, and every new high gets met with the same reflexive question — haven't we run too far?

Fair question. So let's actually look at what "too far" has looked like before.

Eight bull markets, one chart

Yardeni Research put together a chart tracking every S&P 500 bull market since 1966 — plotting each one's percentage gain, day by day, from the moment it started. Line them all up next to each other and the current bull market (the red line) sits right in the middle of the pack.

As of early August, the S&P 500 is up 116.9% since this bull market began on October 12, 2022. That's a big number. It's also only good enough for fifth place out of eight.

Ahead of it: the dot-com run of 1987–2000 (up 582.1%), the post-GFC recovery of 2009–2020 (up 400.5%), the early-80s bull market of 1982–87 (up 228.8%), and the 1974–80 recovery (up 125.6%).

Behind it, three more bull markets that petered out well short of where we are today — including the 2020–22 pandemic rally, which topped out at 114.4% before rolling over.

So when someone tells you this market has "run too far", it's worth asking: further than what, exactly? We're not even at the halfway point of the least impressive bull market in this dataset, let alone the ones that actually earned the label "too far".

What "too far" actually looks like

That 582% dot-com run didn't end because stocks got a bit pricey. It ended because valuations detached completely from anything resembling earnings reality — and even then, it took thirteen years of gains before gravity caught up.

That's Yardeni's real point, and it's one worth underlining: bull markets don't die of old age, and they don't die just because they've been running a while or the gains look big on a chart. Historically, they die when earnings roll over.

So the question worth asking isn't "how long has this been going" or "how much is it up". It's "what's happening to earnings?" And on that front, the picture is still constructive. Q2 blended earnings growth for the S&P 500 came in around 46.7% year over year, with Q3 and Q4 estimates still sitting at a healthy 22.6% and 27.0%. Valuations on the growth side of the market are elevated relative to value, but nowhere near the extremes hit in 2000.

None of that guarantees the run continues. Markets don't owe anyone a smooth ride, and sentiment gauges are starting to flash some of the complacency you'd expect this deep into a rally. But "we've come a long way" and "we're due for trouble" are two different claims, and this chart is a useful reminder of the gap between them.

The takeaway

Three years and change into this bull market, we're up 116.9% — a genuinely strong result, and one worth being pleased about. But history says there's still runway between here and where bull markets actually go to die. If you're nervous about this market having run too far, the more useful exercise isn't staring at the percentage gain. It's watching what happens to earnings from here.

Take the long view.