Finance & economics | Matadors gather

Stocks are on an astonishing run. Yet threats lurk

We assess what could bring the bull market to an end

The stockmarket bull getting attacked by arrows going downwards signifying the attacks will lower its returns.
Illustration: Lehel Kovacs
|New York

All around the world, stockmarkets have been rising at a breakneck pace. Whether you are in America, Europe, Japan or India, prices listed on a bourse near you have spent most of this year setting fresh records, only to break them again straight away (see chart 1). America’s S&P 500 index has jumped by over 70% since a trough in 2022, and risen during 28 of the past 37 weeks, its best streak in more than three decades. True, Chinese investors are in a funk, with stocks yet to recover from a plunge that began last year. But they cut lonely figures: exclude China from MSCI’s index of emerging-market shares, and the remainder have been clocking rapid gains, too.

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This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Matadors gather”

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