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Personal Wealth Management / Expert Commentary
How Long Will This Bull Market Run?
Ken Fisher, Founder, Executive Chairman and Co-Chief Investment Officer of Fisher Investments, tackles one of the most common questions investors ask during any bull market: how much longer can it last? Ken describes how bull markets differ from biological life. While every creature eventually reaches a natural limit, bull markets can endure for a long time when conditions remain favorable.
He explains markets tend to rise far more often than they fall, historically climbing about three periods for every one period they decline. Ken shares why he believes this bull market remains intact and likely continues into next year, while cautioning it's impossible to reliably predict bull market ends in advance.
Transcript
One of the questions that is asked all the time in a bull market, this one or any other one, is, "How much longer do you think the bull market can last?" The answer is: There's not a great answer to that. There's no rule about how long bull markets last. It's like human senescence. We know that on average, unless something untoward happens, how long a given mammal's life is, how long a human's life is. Let me take that to a different way.
Raccoons in the wild in Texas, where I live, tend to live 3 to 5 years. There's a lot of infant mortality among raccoons. If you take that same critter when it's a baby and put it into a caring captivity, that raccoon might last 20 years. Give it good food. Veterinary care. Don't have other critters trying to attack it, etcetera, etcetera, The thing that lives 3 to 5 years in the wild on average, could live to 20. But it's not going to live a lot longer than that, because that's the time where the body just wears out even when you take care of it.
People are like that. Some people abuse themselves, die young. Some people, you know, live to be pretty old. But then there's a limit to how long people last. I had a relative who lived to 110. That's pretty long. That's really long. But at the end, senescence gets you. At the end our bodies just deteriorate.
Bull markets aren't like that. If the conditions are right, bull markets can go on for a really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really long, and then longer. If conditions deteriorate, well, that's a little bit like, you know, getting cancer or heart attack or something from self-abuse, or you get run over by a car. There's no right answer to the question of how long a bull market lasts or how long this bull market lasts.
Do I think this bull market is intact? Yes. Do I think this bull market will go on for some good period of time, like maybe into the middle of next year and longer? Yes I do. Would I tell you how long I think this bull market would go? I wouldn't hazard a guess. I would think it...there's not there's not a right way to do that. Anybody that thinks they know how to do that are wrong.
So I hate to not be able to answer your question, but there's not a right answer to this question. There's a point in time where you might say, "Boy, oh boy, he had a heart attack and he's here in the hospital and we don't think he's going to live very long." And there's things sometimes that you can see that tell you the bull market's going to end. But those I don't see now and it's rare you actually do see those.
Usually, markets tend to rise more than they tend to fall. If you look at the longer history of the stock market, stocks tend to rise about three periods for every one period they fall. But there is the time when the bull market does come to an end. You just don't have a way while the bull market is intact, most of the time, to have any clue of how far into the future that is. The end doesn't come until you're at the end. In the meantime, the bull market runs. I wish I had a better answer for you. I don't. Thank you so much for listening.
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