If you’ve been sitting on the sidelines watching the stock market claw its way back from the April 2025 “Liberation Day” bottom to new all-time highs, you may be asking yourself if you’ve missed your opportunity. Maybe not. The table below shows that, even if it takes the market a full year or longer to set a new high, the returns over the following 12 months have been overwhelmingly positive.
New S&P 500 Index All-Time Highs |
Returns (%) One Year Later |
9/22/1954 | 41.88 |
9/24/1958 | 14.07 |
1/27/1961 | 11.26 |
9/3/1963 | 13.60 |
5/4/1967 | 4.59 |
3/6/1972 | 4.90 |
7/17/1980 | 7.68 |
11/3/1982 | 14.42 |
1/21/1985 | 17.45 |
7/26/1989 | 5.29 |
2/14/1995 | 35.89 |
5/30/2007 | -8.47 |
3/28/2013 | 18.40 |
7/11/2016 | 13.50 |
1/19/2024 | 23.85 |
Avg Annualized Return (%) | 14.55 |
THE S&P 500 INDEX'S AVERAGE ONE-YEAR GAIN: |
14.55% |
FOLLOWING A NEW ALL-TIME HIGH |
As of 7/31/25. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Indices are unmanaged and not available for direct investment. For illustrative purposes only. S&P 500 Index is a market capitalization-weighted price index composed of 500 widely held common stocks. The chart lists the dates and annualized performance figures for each instance in which a new all-time market high for the Index occurred one year or more after the previous all-time high. Data Sources: Ned Davis Research, Morningstar, and Hartford Funds.
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