Charts of the Day: On average, how we doing?

While our clients of course like what they've seen over the past year, many have expressed concern over the 8+-year chasm separating today with the end of the last bear market. I mean, stocks just can't go up forever, right? Absolutely, they cannot! However, as we've expressed herein, bull markets don't die of old age, they die of obesity -- of, let's say, excessive living.

No doubt, some of you will relate excessive living with excessive returns. Therefore -- while, actually, that's not my reference (I'm talking overconfidence and, thus, utter stupidity on the part of private industry and public policymakers) -- we'll go ahead and consider present-era performance in an historical context.

As you'll see below (courtesy of Bespoke Investment Group), while the (S&P 500) returns on a one and five-year basis have been exceptional, the past 2-year results are nothing special, and we're not even close relative to past 10 and 20-year average returns:

Click to enlarge