If you’re waiting for part 11 of the Safe Withdrawal Rate series, please be patient. It’s scheduled for next week and will dive deeper into variable withdrawal rate rules! For this week we have some other pressing business because tomorrow will be the eighth birthday of a very good friend of ours:
The Bull Market that started on March 9, 2009.
Almost eight years ago to the day we saw the trough of the stock market during the Global Financial Crisis when the S&P500 index closed at 676.53 and the Dow Jones Industrial at 6,547.05. The intra-day low on March 6 was even a bit lower – the very ominous 666 points in the S&P500. Everyone pretty much thought the world would end soon!
How bad was the March 2009 trough?
- From its previous high in October 2007, the S&P 500 index fell by almost 57% and even with dividends reinvested the drop was a still staggering 55%.
- This drop was even more severe and at a faster pace than the Dot-Com bust in the early 2000s, which was “only” a 49% drop over 2.5 years!
- In March 2009, the S&P500 fell all the way back to its September 1996 (!) level, so it wiped out 12 years worth of equity gains.
