'The current rally is running long; equities are due for a 3-5% pull-back' is how Deutsche Bank begins to give some context to the scale of the performance of stocks over the last four months. Whether it be liquidity-fueled optimism, optically-pleasing macro data, crisis-fatigue, or just good old-fashioned back-up-the-truck-we're-all-in buying since the last 10% correction in November, the S&P 500 has rallied 22% - essentially unimpeded for 80 days without a drawdown. In between 5% selloffs, the median rise in the S&P 500 is 10% and the duration is 56 days so this current rally is indeed getting long in the tooth (with a 2.5% retracement the best the bears have managed in 2012). To get a better sense of how equities may perform after such a big rally, Deutsche identifies 8 similar cases to the current one when a 10%+ drawdown was followed by a 15%+ recovery: Jul-50, May-70, Dec-74, Aug-98, Sep-01, Oct-02, Feb-03 and Mar-09. At the same point in the rally (i.e. after 3mo), the market continued to grind higher the next 3 months by 4% on average. So a move of this size and velocity (and smoothness) has only occurred 7 times in the history of the S&P 500 and a quick glance at some of those dates marks some notable periods in US economics (and global geopolitics).
Trough to Peak Returns between Two 5% Drawdowns - we are starting to get in to the best ones ever...
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Number of trading days between Two 5% Drawdowns...
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And the S&P 500 has only risen by more than this on six other occasions after a 10% drawdown...
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and many of those were during some of the most crisis prone periods this nation has ever experienced.
Charts: Deutsche Bank