Wednesday is a bell-ringer for the U.S. stock market, which now marks 3,453 days in a bull market rally — the longest on record. The historic phenomenon has generated a wealth of substantial media accounts and analysis — all of it positive.

“The current bull market rally, which started March 9, 2009, became the longest one on record since World War II on Wednesday by avoiding a 20 percent or more decline, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices,” noted a CNBC analysis Wednesday. “The market has risen more than 300 percent since its low nine years ago. It surpassed the rally from 1990 to early 2000, which totaled 3,452 days.”

It advised investors not to fret over the milestone, but instead focus on the “solid underpinnings” driving the record-breaking run.

“The bull market narrowly survived countless panic attacks from crisis-scarred investors along the way,” wrote CNN markets reporter Matt Egan. “There was the downgrade of America’s credit rating in 2011, the feared collapse of the euro, China’s alarming economic slowdown and the dramatic crash in oil prices. Yet each scare failed to derail the steady rise of the economy and corporate profits that has underpinned Wall Street’s record-breaking run. There were close calls, but the S&P 500 never dropped 20 percent, the trigger for a new bear market.

“The remarkable run began in the ashes of the Great Recession and the scariest financial crisis since the 1930s,” Mr. Egan said. “The slow-but-steady economic recovery, coupled with unprecedented aid from the Federal Reserve, catapulted the Dow from around 6,500 to nearly 26,000 today. The S&P 500 has quadrupled from its 2009 low of 666.”

The good news is also going global.

“Stock-market dividend payouts are hitting records all over the world. Global dividends could total $1.36 trillion in 2018,” predicted MarketWatch.

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