In my last piece I told you a bull market at 3.8 years old, up 117%, with 27 new highs this year isn’t unusual. It’s average. Right on schedule, historically speaking.
But I ended on a question.
What actually stops one?
Here are all the wrong answers. The ones you hear all the time.
Old age.
A magazine cover.
A round number on the S&P 500.
Rising interest rates.
Oil Spiking.
A hedge fund blowing up.
A scary headline out of Washington or overseas.
None of those, by themselves, kill a bull market. They rattle it for a week, sometimes a month, and then it keeps going. If you sold on any of those in the last three years, you sold too early.
Here’s what actually does.