S&P500 +10% DrawDowns since 1870
Updated on May 27, 2022
This blog was posted originally on May 10th, 2020. At the time we were in a drawdown, that peaked at -35.95% and took 5 months to recover from the bottom. In August 2020 we recovered all the drawdown then immediately suffered a -10.55% drawdown that lasted till November 2020.
Since then we didn't see a drawdown below 10% until most recently. In January 4, 2022, we peaked with a new all time high at (4,820.2) followed by a drawdown which we are still in at the time of writing this update.
The drawdown peaked (at least so far) at -20.93% on May 20, 2022, based on seasonality I expect we will be out of this by September 2022.
If you continue reading the blog below, you will read that I highly advise against parking your money in any index because of big drawdowns and the probability of staying in one for decades, just look at the Nekkei Index or the S&P500 between 2000-2014. Instead you can easily trade a simple system on the index that trade monthly or yearly and beat the index returns with much lower drawdowns.
There are many videos on my YouTube channel that show simple systems that beats the S&P500 buy and hold, you can check them out over here.
Original Blog, posted on May 10, 2020
Few investors could have predicted that a viral outbreak would end the longest running bull market in US history. The US stock market fell from it's peak in Feb 19, 2020 to current March low more than 33%. We are not yet out of this crash. Any drawdown more than 10% is considered a crash, and any drawdown more than 20% is considered a bear market which is another way of saying that this is not a small correction.
Such volatility in markets cause investors to panic, so it's helpful to keep an eye on the long term performance of the index.
below is a chart that shows drawdowns of more than 20% and how many months it took to reach the bottom and how many months to recover. You will notice that 1909 bar is out of the chart as it took 140 months to reach the bottom. Also 1929 crash took 265 months to recover from bottom so it doesn't show in the chart below.
Markets typically return to previous peak. In fact if you think of it we are always in a draw down until a new high is reached. Sometimes the drawdown is short and sometimes it's long. In recent history, central banks are taking more active roles and through many mechanisms they are interfering with markets and fluffing all assets in order to prevent long bear markets.
The chart below give an average stats of all draw downs since 1900.
We can deduct from the chart above that usually the bigger the drawdown the longer it takes to recover from it.
The current drawdown hasn't ended yet. We don't know as we did not fully recover from it. It was the fastest drawdown in history, also the federal reserve reaction was unseen before. as they are printing more money than ever before and using it to buy assets.
The norm has been that we always get to new highs in the US, but sometimes it takes a long time to get back and if you buy and hold then your money will be doing nothing even if you hold all the way through. Keep in mind that inside bear markets are rally's and more drawdown. The excel sheet below shows the many bull/crash markets inside bear markets.
There is another point to take into consideration, some markets don't recover at all. Take Japan for example, as you see in the chart below, Japan stock market index is still underwater since 1990.
The point that I want to drive, is there is no perfect index to park your money and forget about it. You need a system to make your money work hard for your retirement nest egg.