By

March 9, 2019

Ten years ago, when the global financial crisis seemed at its worst, the stock market hit rock bottom.

The bull run that has followed now ranks among the greatest rallies of the past century: The S&P 500 has more than quadrupled, adding $17.5 trillion in value, and, of the 11 bull markets since the end of World War II, only the run that ended with the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000 tops the current one in duration and returns.

But despite the superlatives, this rally’s primary characteristic is how much skepticism it generated. The intensity of gains that defined the stock market bubbles of the 1920s and 1990s never developed. Instead, many investors spent the past decade deriding the rally and anticipating its demise.

Bull markets are usually driven by a strengthening economy that fuels corporate profits. But the economic scars of the downturn a decade ago were deep and the recovery slow.