Bull Market

What counts as a bull market

The conventional definition: a sustained 20%+ rise in a major index from a recent low, with broadly positive sentiment. There's no formal arbiter — financial media usually declares one in retrospect.

Bull markets historically run longer than bear markets. The post-2009 US bull (2009–2020) lasted roughly 11 years, the longest in modern history. The 1990s bull ran about 10 years before the dot-com peak. Average post-WWII US bull markets have lasted around 5 years; bears around 1.5.

Notable historical bulls

• 1949–1968 — the post-war bull, S&P up around 800% over nearly two decades.
• 1982–2000 — the great expansion, driven by falling inflation, financial liberalization, and eventually tech. S&P up over 1300%.
• 2009–2020 — post-GFC bull. S&P up about 400% peak to peak.
• 2020–2021 — short, sharp post-COVID bull driven by stimulus and reopening euphoria. Ended with the 2022 inflation-driven correction.
• 2023–present — bull rebuild after 2022, driven by AI optimism, large-cap tech leadership, and Fed easing expectations.

Why bulls last so long

Three structural reasons bulls outweigh bears in cumulative effect:

• Long-run earnings growth. Companies in aggregate produce more profits over time, and stock prices follow.
• Inflation. Even nominal price growth in the absence of real growth tends to lift indices.
• Re-rating. Periods of sustained low rates and stable growth tend to push price-earnings multiples higher, amplifying earnings growth.

The standard estimate is that the US stock market produces roughly 10% annualized returns over very long periods, with about 7% real after inflation. That long-run number is the average across bull and bear markets — a function of bulls being long and strong enough to outweigh bears.

What bulls hide

The seductive part of bull markets is that almost everything works. Speculative assets rally hardest, momentum strategies look brilliant, individual stock-pickers convince themselves of skill, and leverage magnifies what already feels easy. Surviving the eventual reversal — and reversals always come — is what separates durable wealth from cycle-trapped paper gains.

The 1990s bull made dot-com day-traders look like geniuses for years before wiping most of them out. The 2009-2020 bull made buy-and-hold indexers look right by simple discipline. Both lessons are real; both can mislead in the next cycle.

Crypto bulls

Crypto bulls compress the same dynamics into faster cycles. The 2017 bull took Bitcoin from ~$1,000 to ~$20,000 in a year and ran altcoins up 100x or more. The 2020-21 bull took Bitcoin from ~$10K to ~$69K and produced sustained DeFi and NFT manias. The 2024-25 cycle has been driven by ETF inflows, memecoin speculation, and AI agent hype.

The pattern: each crypto bull peaks in altseason euphoria, then collapses 70%+ across the asset class. The peaks have typically come within a few months of Bitcoin halving cycles, though the relationship is less clean in recent cycles than crypto folklore suggests.

How investors should think about bulls

The unhelpful but accurate framing: bulls are great while they last, but the only thing you control is your behavior across the full cycle. Three boring habits matter more than positioning for the bull peak:

1. Save and invest consistently regardless of market conditions (dollar-cost averaging).
2. Maintain an asset allocation that survives bear markets without forcing you to sell at the bottom.
3. Treat bull-market gains as gains, not as evidence of skill. The same strategy that printed during a bull will face serious tests in the next bear.