The stock market just pulled off something so rare that Wall Street veterans had to dig back nearly two decades to find anything comparable. Through most of 2024, the market climbed day after day, week after week, month after month—and that relentless rise just made history.
The Streak That Stopped Traffic On Wall Street
The S&P 500 recently accomplished something extraordinary—it stayed above its 50-day moving average for over 150 consecutive trading days. When the streak finally ended in late November 2024, analysts scrambled to their history books. The last time the market displayed this kind of relentless strength? You’d have to rewind all the way to 2006-2007, just before the financial crisis changed everything.
Here’s what makes this significant: the 50-day moving average acts like a technical heartbeat for the market. When stocks consistently trade above this line, it signals sustained buying pressure and investor confidence. Breaking below it doesn’t necessarily spell disaster, but staying above it for 150+ days? That’s exceptionally rare. Since 1950, the S&P 500 has only managed this feat a handful of times.
The streak that ended in November 2024 lasted roughly 174 days—from late April through late November. During this period, the S&P 500 surged from around 5,100 to hit a peak of 6,890 on October 28th. That’s a gain of over 35% before the eventual pullback. The index jumped 24% in 2023 and gained another 23% in 2024, marking back-to-back years of remarkable performance that fueled this historic run.
What Happened After Previous Streaks
Contrary to what you might expect, these extended streaks haven’t historically signaled impending doom. When the market displayed similar resilience in 2016-2017 and again in 2017-2018, stocks generally continued marching higher afterward. Based on the three previous streaks of 150+ days, the S&P 500 gained an average of 8% in the following six months.
The context matters enormously here. The economy showed resilience throughout 2024, corporate earnings remained healthy, and the Federal Reserve started cutting interest rates after a prolonged hiking campaign. These factors created the perfect environment for sustained market strength. However, by November, some cracks started appearing. Job growth began flatlining, consumer sentiment weakened, and concerns about an AI bubble triggered a pullback.
When the S&P 500 finally dipped below its 50-day moving average on November 20th, it had pulled back about 5% from its October peak. This marked the index’s fifth-longest streak above this technical level since 1950—a testament to how unusual this period of strength really was.
What It Means For Investors Now
The end of this 18-year record doesn’t automatically mean the bull market is over. Markets need to breathe, and technical pullbacks are normal even in strong uptrends. What made 2024’s streak remarkable wasn’t just its length but the backdrop: two consecutive years of 20%+ gains heading into what many expect to be a third positive year.
Valuations tell an important part of the story. The S&P 500 now trades at a price-to-earnings ratio around 25, well above its ten-year average of 19. High valuations don’t kill bull markets on their own, but they do require earnings to keep growing. Wall Street analysts expect S&P 500 earnings to grow about 15% in 2025—the highest estimate since tracking began in 1996.
The takeaway? This 18-year milestone represents an extraordinary period of market strength that combined economic resilience, corporate profit growth, and investor optimism. While the streak has ended, history suggests these extended runs above technical levels often precede continued gains rather than crashes. The bigger question isn’t whether the streak ended, but whether the fundamental conditions that created it remain intact going forward.
