Escalator Up, Elevator Down

Why does it seem like the market goes down faster than it goes up? We dive into the notion that stock market movements seem to take the escalator up and the elevator going down.

Perhaps we simply have a clear recollection of declining stock markets, such as the great financial crisis of 2008-09 or the March 2020 COVID-induced decline. Are faster declines just in our minds, or is there some truth to the feeling? We look through the record book for context.

It turns out that bear market declines have averaged -38%, lasting about 15 months. In contrast, bull markets advances have historically returned just over 200 percent on average and lasted 70 months. So the elevator-escalator analogy seems to hold up.

In other news: The U.S. Federal Reserve met recently and voted to increase rates by half a percent. And the employment report this week showed recent job gains were better than expected.

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