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How much longer can this bull market last?

This January was one of the worst starts to a year for the markets. The S&P 500 plunged 6% over the month, as news on oil and China rattled investors.

The intraday drops were large enough to make us question whether the seven-year bull market could be coming to an end. After nearly seven years and gains of over 150% from the March 2009 lows, maybe this bull market was getting a little long in the tooth.

For an historical comparison, we decided to examine what previous bull and bear markets looked like.

Bull markets are marked in blue and bear markets in red. We define a bear market as a decline of 20% from a high. Correspondingly, a bull market is a rise of 20% from a low.

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We adjusted the scale such that a drop of 10% in red would be equivalent to a 100% gain in blue. This gives perspective as to the amount of money gained or lost during the swings. For example, the most extreme drop was in 1929, when the market lost nearly 90%. From that 90% loss it would take a 900% gain just to get back to even. For many investors that didn't happen until well into the 1950s.

In terms of time, the current bull run isn't unusual, especially when you look at the early 1980s and 1990s, both of which had bull markets that lasted for more than 9 years.

The fact that the market is up over 150% is also not abnormal. The market experienced gains of 259% and 527% in the 1980s and 1990s, respectively.

There have been 13 bear markets over the time span of the chart, which includes 3 in the Great Depression. Most of them have produced declines of 20% to 50%, and they've been much shorter lived than the bull markets.

Overall, each time there's been a downturn, the market has come back and notched new highs.

However, it's worth pointing out that this time may be different: never before has the Federal Reserve enacted such dramatic monetary policy measures in response to a crisis. And, the current experiment of raising rates may make historical comparisons more difficult.