What Matters About Market History, and the Worldwide Bull Market

In this podcast, Motley Fool personal finance expert Robert Brokamp speaks with Ryan Detrick, the chief market strategist at Carson Group and a regular source of insightful and fun stats about stocks.

Also in this episode:

• Markets all over the world are in a bull market, and a record number of stocks in the S&P 500 are outperforming the index.
• Mortgage rates drop to four-year lows as home price growth slows.
• How many calendar years has the stock market declined more than 10%?
• Tackle your financial tasks by having a "financial health week" as we recently did at The Motley Fool.

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. When you're ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.

A full transcript is below.

This podcast was recorded on Feb. 28, 2026.

Robert Brokamp: What we can learn from market history and the worldwide bull market. That and more on this Saturday, Personal Finance edition of Motley Fool Money. I'm Robert Brokamp, this week, I speak with Ryan Detrick, the Chief Market Strategist at Carson Group, and a consistent source of data about the market's past and what it could say about the future. But first, some news from this week. According to Callum Thomas of Topdown Charts, 80% of the 70 companies he tracks have stock markets that are up at least 20% off their 52 week lows. He writes that this indicator has rarely been above 50% over the past couple of decades, and a surge like this is usually a good sign. Previous spikes have happened in 2003, 2009, and 2020, which were all good times to be an investor. Looking more locally, a recent graphic from Bloomberg illustrates that the year to date rally in US stocks is the broadest ever, as there's a record number of individual stocks in the S&P 500 that are outperforming the index. That said, not every stock is doing well, including some of the biggest tech oriented names, which has resulted in lower valuations for those stocks. In fact, according to Matt Cerminaro of Ritholtz Wealth Management, the forward PE of the MAG 7 minus Tesla is now below the forward PE of the consumer staples sector, which has returned almost 15% so far this year. Next up, mortgage rates are dropping.

The current 30 year fixed rate is 6% down around 80 basis points from a year ago, and the lowest level since 2022. Lower rates might make home ownership more affordable for some buyers, especially as price growth is slowing. This past week, Standard & Poor's announced that the Case-Shiller National Home Price Index rose or annualized 1.3% in December, down from 1.4% in November. In other home loan news, a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York published on Tuesday says that the total amount in home equity lines of credit, otherwise known as HELOCs rose in the fourth quarter of 2025, which was the 15th consecutive quarterly increase. The total amount in HELOCs is now $434 billion up 36% over the past four years. According to bank rate, the current average interest rate on a HELOC is 7.3%. Now the number of the week, which is 12. That is the number of calendar years that the S&P 500 has lost more than 10% since 1928, according to a report from Barry Gilbert of Carson Group. In other words, the market has been profitable or lost less than 10% in almost 88% of calendar years. There are four decades that didn't see any years of 10% plus declines, those being the 1960s, 1980s, 1990s, and the 2010s. How much does that history matter? Well, that's the topic of my next conversation when Motley Fool Money continues.

We are at the Motley Fool believe that the stock market is the best path to long term wealth, and we have the historical data to back it up. But how much does history matter in our ever changing world and what past trends are likely to persist? Here to talk about that and much more is Ryan Detrick, the Chief Market Strategist at Carson Group, the co host of the Facts versus Feelings podcast, and one of my favorite sources of insightful or just fun stats about the market. Ryan, welcome to Motley Fool Money.

Ryan Detrick: Robert, thank you so much for having me. Obviously, a big fan of you, and then the Motley Fool. Geez, like a lot of people, I started reading Motley Fool a long time ago when I got into this industry. So it's a real honor. You quote me all the time, so thank you for that, but it's an honor to get to talk to each other about how we see the world. Thank you again for having me.

Robert Brokamp: Thank you for those kind words, and it's great to have you here. In your podcasts, your articles, your social media posts, you provide just a regular stream of facts about historical trends. With much of that data going back to 1950s sometimes as far back as the 1920s, what do you say to someone who says things are different today. Way back then, they didn't have the internet. They didn't have low cost index funds, commission free trading, apps, enough our pockets. We've transitioned from an industrial to a service economy. How much does history matter?

Ryan Detrick: Oh, that's a good one there. Yeah, I love the quote by Mark Twain. History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. You look at history, yes, there was no internet 50 years ago. Now, of course, we have AI. There's always something out there. I think what's always true, though, is fear and greed. In April, when the stock market was down and was 20% and crashing, there was a lot of fear out there. In the late 90s, there was a lot of greed out there. Those are things that are never going to go away. Maybe some of, I don't know, the people at the table, so to speak, whether it be computers or algorithms or hedge funds or high frequency trading, all that stuff. It is different than the past, but what gets us places, and we're going to get into some more of this is, earnings and profit margins and the Fed, all that stuff, that hasn't really changed my opinion. We love using history. I think what I like about using history is it does show a guide. It's not gospel. It's a midterm here, so the midterm news don't do that well. Well, listen, we're still pretty optimistic, we get into that stuff. But it shows a guide. We've been through a lot of bad stuff before. We've had a lot of good stuff before. That's why I think it helps your average investor. I work with advisors, so Carson Group of financial advisors every single day and their clients. I think that's why it's so important to show we've been through this before. Yeah, it's different but at the same time, is it really that different? Fear and greed is still what drives markets.

Robert Brokamp: Whatever you do in your writing is to say, OK, this is a current set of circumstances, and based on history, this is the likelihood that the market will go up. Here's the median and average return. How do you distinguish between trends that are valid versus a spurious correlation, which is borrowing from the title of one of your recent articles?

Ryan Detrick: Well, so you're saying the fact that an NFC team just won the Super Bowl by more than 10 points, the S&P 500 is higher 19 out of 21 years. You're saying that's not a reason to be bullish? I know. Playful, I get it.

Robert Brokamp: By the way, the median return, almost 15%. Very good news.

Ryan Detrick: Yeah, very good news there. Or, this is the year of the horse and when animals walk on four legs, the market does a lot better than the times animals either, use two or like a snake crawl, but nonetheless, or slither. I guess a snake slithers, is that what we call it? It doesn't matter. Yeah, that's the fun stuff. But at the end of the day, we look at a lot of data. I work with a guy named Sonu Varghese, our Chief Macro Strategist, and he's my co host on Facts vs Feelings. We look at the macro backdrop and we look at all these different factors. It's not like one thing matters, we took a big top down approach and focus on all this different stuff. To us, again, it's like, what drives long term stock gains? Well, I think it's earnings, and we have seen record earnings. We have seen record profit margins. We continue to see positive things. I get it. I know a lot of listeners probably feel this way because consumer confidence is very low. We just got some data, and it's still very low. In some cases, consumer confidence is lower than it was during 100 year pandemic. Yet retail sales are still strong. Auto sales are still strong. So it's this interesting dichotomy, people feel one way and do another. To put a bow on this, we be following the hard data. Three years ago, the Carson Group was pretty optimistic. Not many people were. We were laughed at. We were mocked for that optimistic view. We said, follow the hard data. The hard data continues, in our opinion, to suggest things are strong and again, that is what the Fed is up to. That is what fiscal policy is up to. That is earnings, all these different things we pay attention to. It's fun to talk about animals on four legs, I get it. But no, we don't invest in that. We focus on the fundamentals.

Robert Brokamp: As you just hinted out there, you cover a lot of ground in your articles, podcasts on social media, macro, some fundamental, even some technical analysis. You mentioned earnings, but if you had to narrow it down to maybe three or five things that are most important to pay attention to, what would they be?

Ryan Detrick: Well, one of them I talked about, so we'll get that out of the way right now. Earnings, are hitting record highs. Profit margins are hitting record highs. We're looking at some of the best revenue this fourth quarter that's wrapping up since we've seen it like four years. So that's an important one. That's number 1. I'll try to do three. So that's number 1. Now I do have what we call a CMT. I'm not a country music person. That's not what that means. I'm a chartered market technician. So I do like to look at technicals. Relative strength, the seasonality stuff that I'm known for, market sentiment, all these different things. When you do that, there's something called an advance-decline line, Robert. It's a cumulative basis. How many stocks going up versus down every single day. Now keep this real simple, that's market breath. Market breadth leads price. Now, in the late 90s, market breadth peaked and started to roll over. That was a warning that something was wrong under the service. Because literally the only thing going up was tech stocks. In 2006, 2007, financial started to go down. A lot of other groups started to go down. There were warnings when market breadth was weak. Where are we right now? Literally a week ago, the S&P 500, advanced decline line hit new all time high. The New York Stock Exchange, advanced decline line hit all time high, mid caps, all time high. Small caps, 52 week high. What am I getting at? This is still a healthy, strong bull market being led by a lot of stuff. I get it. Technology has lagged. We understand that. But the lifeblood of bull markets rotation. We are seeing that. So, earnings strong.

That's good. Advanced decline lines, market breadth still solid. That's good. The third one that I would say is very important, we follow every day, are the credit markets. If the credit market see a monster under the bed, there'd be more stress in things like high yield spreads, BBB spreads, kind of keep this high level and fairly simple. We're not seeing that at all. In 2023, the regional bank crisis, high yield spreads really didn't move that much. It was saying, it's not as scary as we're telling you on TV, 2024 when we had the Yen Carry trade unwind and I know maybe some people remember this. Trust me, for a few days in August of 2024, it was a pretty scary period. Japan was crashing, Gold market was crashing. The credit markets weren't worried. Even during the crash we had around Liberation Day. The bottom line, credit spreads hung in there. The credit markets weren't worried. So right now, worry, credit spreads are just fine. I know the AI stuff and the worries about software. Yes, maybe some credit spreads on some of the more specific technology companies have blown out a little bit. But overall, the credit markets are functioning just fine. Credit to me are the smartest people in the room. Credit is strong, breadth is strong, earnings are strong. Those are three things that we've seen for honestly three years now, and knock on wood, they're going to continue to be strong. That's why we remain overweight equities and optimistic in 2026.

Robert Brokamp: So you're optimistic about the market. You're also optimistic about the economy. You don't see a recession on the horizon. You just highlighted many reasons for the optimism. Anything else people should be looking at or that you're factoring into the fact that you think the economy is probably going to be OK?

Ryan Detrick: Yeah, we talked a lot about the US obviously because we're US centric. But around the globe, I think it's really important to point this out. Most investors know this. The rest of the globe has done really well relative to the US over the past year or so, but on an economic front, we've seen a lot of growth coming from emerging markets, coming from developed international around the globe. I mean, we are seeing that. It's really a global story in terms of economic growth and stock market returns. I think that's a real positive thing. Things that we like to look at business investment. I mean, business investment is strong, AI investment. I know a lot of people talk about this. AI CapEx spending continues to be strong, showing virtually no slowdown. Consumption is still solid. You look at all these things together. Yeah, housing's taken away from GDP, six out of seven quarters. Okay, we get it. That's a weak part out there. But the reality is we're what, $38 trillion economy? There are some cracks out there, sure, but overall, I think our economy is still really on firm footing, and the great part about it, the rest of the globe is really on firm footing, also, let's comment here. Look at copper, called Doctor Copper. Copper is flirting with all time highs. People are gobbling up copper. It's hard to be bearish. The overall global economy of copper was weak. You could be bearish. It was weak. It's not. That's an important thing from our point of view, as well. So overall, it's a nice global bull market and economy out there.

Robert Brokamp: One thing related to the economy that of course is of concern or that people pay attention to both economically and politically is inflation. Talk a little bit about why you think inflation will likely stay closer to 3% than the Fed's target of 2%.

Ryan Detrick: Well, yes. We can get out some rabbit holes with this one, if you want. The Fed's targets 2%. The Fed itself has said, yeah, that's, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. It's probably not around 2%. We've been saying for a while that we think we're going to be in a 3% inflation world versus 2% inflation world. Now to be very clear here, if inflation were to soar to 6% the next six months, yes, this would upset the apple cart. This would mean the markets are probably in trouble, we're probably going to have higher interest rates, not as many fed cuts. That wouldn't be a bullish scenario. But you look at history going back, like, 150 years, inflation's averaged about 3.5%. We're right core PCE. The Fed's favorite measure of inflation came in last Friday, right about 3% year over year. We don't think that's a bad thing. We've been flirting with 3% for a while now, and last I checked, economy's doing pretty good, and the stock market's hanging in there. The reality is look around to the previous answer. Commodity prices. As everybody knows, on this show, how are commodity prices doing? Yeah, they're higher. So that is upward pressure on inflation. But the other part of this, something called shelter. Shelter is about 42% of core DCE. Keep this fairly simple. That is deflationary in a way. We are seeing housing prices, rent prices. Rent prices have been negative year to year from Zillow and apartment lists for, like, a couple of years now. The government's data is delayed. Keep it easy here. We think the shelter is going to put a lead on inflation. So we're going to have inflation right around 3% or so. That's OK. We've been seeing it. That's where we are. But again, we manage billions of dollars on the Carson team last comment here. For years, we've been positioning for a world of a little bit more inflation, a little bit more being around 3% than 2%, maybe a little bit less bonds, maybe a little bit more stocks. We do have some gold. We have some managed futures. I say, if you drop it, it hit your foot and it hurts, you might want to own a little bit more in your portfolio than you did say 10, 15 years ago. That's how we position, and it's been working really well, honestly, we think it will continue with a little bit higher inflation world around 3%.

Robert Brokamp: You mentioned to sell off in some tech related software stocks, and in your podcast, you reminded folks that a year ago, we were all talking about DeepSeek and what happened then, and that ended up being a pretty good buying opportunity. Is that generally what you think right now when you see some of these names going down 10, 15, 20%?

Ryan Detrick: Yeah, it is. On Facts versus Feelings, Sona and I talked about that recently. Just a year ago, right now, we're all worried about DeepSeek, and the worry was there this cheap Chinese chatbot that's going to come in and mess everything up, and people aren't going to be investing in AI anymore, they're going to be investing in CapEx. That literally were the headlines a year ago, and now it's almost laughable when we see all the AI spending that we're still seeing. Where we are now, I think it's somewhat similar. We are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Yes, there are companies, there are industries that are in trouble because of the revolutionary changes we're seeing with AI. But when it comes specifically to software, we know there are some really solid companies with really solid modes that are still making a lot of money that have really pulled back. People say all the time, well, the market's expensive. Parts of the market are, but last I look, software is the cheapest it's been relative to the S&P 500 since 2013. That's down, they listen. I've tried to catch a falling knight before. Robert, maybe you have. It's not very smart because sometimes you cut yourself. It looks cool when you do it. But I think it makes sense for someone who has been waiting for parts of the market that are going to be cheaper. Software is really cheap. If you have some technology, we didn't have the money, we sold a little bit of broad based technology ETFs and bought a little bit of software, because we think it's going to come back. In 6-9 months, we're going to look back and see, once again, our opinion, the large cap tech wasn't dead. The MAG 7 wasn't dead. Yes, this was volatile. Yes, this was unfortunate for a lot of investors that got over the top in large cap tech and MAG 7 the start of this year. But that's why we stayed diversified. That's why we don't always chase a shiny object. If it's the best group for three years in a row, like MAG 7 was, probably won't be the best group again. Last comment on this. Time magazine had that cover. AI architects with the person of the year, all the big leaders in AI. When I saw that cover, I was like, that's a pretty high bar, AI is incredible. The technology we has amazing. But that's a really, really high bar, and sure enough, MAG 7's lagged a little bit. I don't think it's abnormal, but I do think there's some great opportunities for investors here to step up. Old saying, stock market is the only place things go on sale. Everyone runs out of the store screaming. I'm seeing a lot of screaming running out of the store. I think savvy investors might use this opportunity, and you look back, and you've got to thank yourself down the road.

Robert Brokamp: Final question here. We're long term investors here at the Motley Fool. We preach buy and hold. A lot of what you write about is short termish in nature. You talked about the seasonal stuff. You recently pointed out that we're in what you call the banana peel part of February. So it's all very interesting. But to what degree should long term investors factor those types of things into their investing strategy?

Ryan Detrick: Oh, I'd say very little. That's a great question because, it's where we put this is this. For long term investors, that's awesome. The best investors I've ever met are long term investors, they put money in their 401k. They put money in investing every two weeks, every month, and they look up in a couple decades and made a lot of money. But it's not that easy. When you have a bear market, like we did last April, even if you're a long term investor, it's uncomfortable. It's so important to know that volatility is the toll we pay to invest. It's something we say a lot on the Carson team. The reality is on average, you see a 10% correction once a year, you see a bear market about every three-and-a-half years. You see a 5% mild pull back four times a year and a 3% seven times a year. A bunch of numbers. I get it. Just know that it will be scary, will be uncomfortable, but long term investing is one of the best ways to create wealth, one of the best ways to beat inflation, and a lot of times when it's scary is when you want to really step up or at least what's the old saying? Eisenhower, plans are useless. Planning is everything. They come into the year expecting a 15% peak to trough correction at some point, because, by the way, that's the average peak to trough corrections in 1980. That's normal. When it happens, don't panic. When it happens, don't make a rash decision. You're not going to feel comfortable when you see your 401k is down a whole bunch. I get it. Everybody felt that way back in April. But the people that didn't panic, didn't sell, maybe used this opportunity for those long term gains when you buy something on the cheap, that's the way to invest.

Robert Brokamp: This has been an enlightening conversation as expected. Thanks so much for joining us.

Ryan Detrick: I appreciate it, Robert. Thank you, and thanks to all the listeners out there. I can't wait to come back. Thank you.

ADVERTISEMENT: Every Tuesday, we take a deep dive into the world of security with security now. Hi, this is Leo Laporte. Join me and Steve Gibson, as we talk about the latest security information, that big report that says password managers don't protect their vaults well enough, Steve will look at the details, explain what it means and why you don't have to be too worried. But still, good to know all of that. This Tuesday and every Tuesday, security now, you'll find it on our website at twit.tv/sn or wherever you get your podcast.

Robert Brokamp: It's time to get it done, and I mean, really get stuff done, just as we did this past week at The Motley Fool, because last week was our 16th annual financial health week, during which we encourage employees to use company time to tackle personal finance tasks. During the week, we hold classes taught by both internal and external experts. We offer a checklist of money related to do items, and we offer rewards to fools who complete at least seven of those tasks. Those classes and to do items cover just about everything, including budgeting, workplace benefits, investing, retirement, insurance, college planning, estate planning, and wealth defense. Now, you may not work at a company that has a financial wellness program like what we have here at The Motley Fool, but you can hold your own financial health week or even just a day when you clear your calendar, limit distractions and devote a few hours to those lingering money related items on your to do list. That investment of time will pay off for years to come in the form of a bigger portfolio, a stronger safety net, better awareness of the current state of your finances and what you can do today to get you closer to where you want to be. To quote productivity guru James Clear, your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits.

That, my friends is the show. Thanks for listening, and thanks as always to Part Shannon, the engineer for this episode. People on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against. So don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool editorial standards, and is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. To see our full advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes. I'm Robert Brokamp. Fool on, everybody.

Robert Brokamp, CFP has positions in Tesla and Zillow Group. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Tesla and Zillow Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.