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S&P 500 gains have come in extreme bursts, not steady grind
Over the past five years, SPY’s rise was driven by two long “runs” up, covering about three years of gains, while markets were falling or stalled roughly 40% of the time.
Yahoo Finance argues that the S&P 500’s recent behavior has looked less like a steady compounding story and more like a sequence of extended risk on or risk off periods, leaving investors to manage outcomes that can swing quickly rather than progress evenly.
The article describes SPY’s performance as moving through a large, rarely interrupted run from about $350 to $600, followed by a pullback tied to the 2025 tariff situation, and then another extended run that it characterizes as taking the index from roughly $480 to $750.
Across those moves, the piece estimates SPY gained about $520 points over the period, with the total return over the half-decade produced by the two “black” runs that together covered around three years, according to the author’s framing.
It also notes that gains in this environment have often been concentrated into compressed timeframes, with months or even a full year of progress sometimes occurring within a few explosive weeks or days.
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