Bear market vs bull market: what every US bear market since 1973 tells you

A bull market is a long rise in share prices; a bear market is a fall of 20 % or more from the previous high. The definitions take one sentence each. The question behind them takes data: how deep do bear markets go, how long do they last, and how long does the way back take? This guide answers it with every bear market in the S&P 500 since 1973, plus the two famous ones before that.

Bull market and bear market in one sentence each

• Bull market: a period in which prices rise for months or years, usually measured from a low until the next fall of 20 % or more begins.
• Bear market: a fall of at least 20 % from the previous high, lasting until prices recover to a new high. A fall of 10–20 % is usually called a correction.

The names are old market slang: a bull attacks by thrusting its horns up, a bear by swiping its paws down. The 20 % line is a convention, not a law of nature, but it is the one used by most data providers and the press, so we use it too.

Are we in a bear market right now?

A bear market exists when the S&P 500 closes at least 20 % below its previous closing high. Whether that is true today changes every day, so this guide does not print a number that dates. The live answer is on two pages that update with the market:

• Drawdowns: how far markets are below their highs, for the S&P 500 and the other markets we track.
• Is the stock market crashing?, which puts today's distance from the high next to the twelve big falls since 1955.

Every US bear market since 1973, in one table

Source: S&P 500 price index, daily closes, 1973 to 30 Oct 2026; a bear market = a close at least 20 % below the previous closing high, ending when the index closes at a new high. The price index excludes dividends, so the falls are a little deeper than with dividends reinvested; our other guides quote 2022 as −23.9 %, which is the S&P 500 ETF with dividends at month-ends, a different measure.

Before 1973 the most famous case is the crash of 1929: from 1929 to 1932 US stocks fell 85 % over 33 months. The 1929 crash guide has the year-by-year numbers.

Two kinds of bear market stand out in the table:

• The slow ones: 1973–74, 2000–02 and 2007–09 took 17 to 31 months to reach the bottom and five and a half to seven and a half years to get from the old high to a new one. These are the falls that cost investors a decade.
• The fast ones: 1987 and 2020 were over within months. 1987 took about a third off, most of it in two months, and recovered within two years; 2020 fell 33.9 % in about a month and was back at a new high five months after the low. The 1987 crash guide explains why fast crashes behave so differently from slow ones.

How long bear markets last, and how long bull markets last

Across the seven bear markets since 1973:

The bull markets in between, measured from each bottom to the peak that started the next bear market (six completed since 1974), gained +259 % on average (median +178 %) and lasted 82 months on average (median 67). The current bull market began at the October 2022 low.

That asymmetry is the most useful fact about bear and bull markets: since 1973, bull markets lasted about five to six times longer than bear markets and gained far more than bear markets took. It is why long-term holders came out ahead despite seven falls of 25 % to 57 %. It is also why the hard part is not knowing this, but holding on through the 15 or 30 months when it does not feel true.

The arithmetic of the way back

A loss and the gain needed to repair it are not the same size. A fall of 20 % needs a gain of 25 % to get back to the high; a fall of 30 % needs 43 %; a fall of 50 % needs 100 %. The deeper the bear market, the longer the climb, which is exactly what the "months back to a new high" column shows: the three falls of around 50 % took four to almost six years from the bottom.

The drawdown recovery calculator does the arithmetic for any loss, and the max drawdown guide explains why the worst fall is the number that decides whether people stay invested.

The stages of a bear market

Looking back, most bear markets went through recognisable phases. They are only visible afterwards; nobody rings a bell at the time.

• Denial. Prices slip from the high, and the first falls are bought as a chance. In slow bear markets this phase can last months.
• Capitulation. Selling accelerates as investors who had held on give up. The steepest falls and the worst headlines tend to come close to the bottom.
• Recovery. Prices rise while the news is still bad; the first part of the rise is usually met with disbelief. The old high is the finish line, and as the table shows, reaching it took anywhere from five months to almost six years after the bottom.

What protected a portfolio differed from one bear market to the next. In the deflationary bust of 1929–32, government bonds did their job: 10-year Treasuries returned +17 % over the four fall years while stocks lost 62 %. In 2022, from the December 2021 peak to the September 2022 low, the S&P 500 fell 24 % and 10-year Treasuries fell 17 % over the same months, so bonds fell with stocks. The stock–bond correlation guide explains when bonds hedge and when they do not.

What investors can do, without predicting

No one has a reliable record of calling the start or the end of a bear market. What the history above supports is preparing for the falls instead of forecasting them:

• Size the stock share to the fall you can live through. Seven bear markets since 1973 fell between 25 % and 57 %. A stock share you can hold through a 50 % fall is the one you are likely to keep.
• Diversify the defensive part. Bonds, cash and gold each helped in some bear markets and not in others; the crash protection guide shows what each did in every big fall since 1955.
• Keep a cash buffer and avoid leverage, so that a bear market never forces a sale at the bottom.
• Decide on a process before the fall. A rules-based approach, such as the trend-following process explained in our trend-following guide, replaces decisions taken in the middle of the capitulation phase with decisions taken in advance. It does not avoid fast crashes; it is built for the slow ones.
• Test your own mix. The Portfolio Crash Test shows what your mix of stocks, bonds, gold and cash did in every big fall since 1972.

Frequently asked questions

Hamann, H. (2026). Bear market vs bull market: what every US bear market since 1973 tells you. InvestWealth.com. https://www.investwealth.com/learn/guides/bear-market-vs-bull-market

<a href="https://www.investwealth.com/learn/guides/bear-market-vs-bull-market">Bear market vs bull market: what every US bear market since 1973 tells you</a> (InvestWealth.com)