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By one common definition, a bear market occurs when stock prices fall for a sustained period, dropping at least 20 percent from their peak. The Great Recession was accompanied by a painful bear market that lasted nearly a year and a half. Here is a look at some notable bear markets of the past 80 years, with the crash of shown for comparison. The stock market crash of Oct. Less than a year after the end of World War II, stock prices peaked and began a long slide.

As the postwar surge in demand tapered off and Americans poured their money into savings, the economy tipped into a sharp "inventory recession" in The economy expanded, but the Bay of Pigs attack of April and Cuban Missile Crisis of October sparked Cold War jitters and a brief bear market. Rapid-fire growth ended with a mild recession, accompanied by relatively high inflation of about 6 percent annually.

The bear market began just as Richard Nixon was elected president after a tumltuous year of assassinations and riots. The weak economy added to a tense national atmosphere dominated by the growing U. Israel's Yom Kippur War and the subsequent Arab oil embargo sent energy prices soaring, sparking a lengthy recession.

The annual consumer inflation rate topped 10 percent. The Watergate scandal forcing President Nixon to resign. After nearly a decade of sustained inflation, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to nearly 20 percent, pushing the economy into recession. The combination of high inflation and slow growth — known as stagflation — was a factor behind Ronald Reagan's victory over President Carter in After a prolonged bull run, computerized "program trading" strategies swamped the market and contributed to the Black Monday crash of Oct.

Illustrated History of Every S&P Bear Market

Investors were also nervous after a heated debate between the U. As a result the Dow fell Yet while the days after the crash were frightening, by early December the market had bottomed out, and a new bull run had started. The bursting of the dot-com bubble followed a period of soaring stock prices and exuberant speculation on new Internet companies.

Companies with little or no profits had market values that often equaled or exceeded that of established "old-economy" corporate giants. The Nasdaq composite index, which soared in value thanks to the listings of hundreds of tech start-ups, plunged 50 percent in nine months and never again came close to its peak.

A long-feared bursting of the housing bubble became a reality beginning in , and the rising mortgage delinquency rate quickly spilled over into the credit market. By , Wall Street giants like Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros. By February the market had fallen to its lowest levels since TODAY Nightly News Meet the Press Dateline Morning Joe Hardball Ed Maddow The Last Word msnbc.

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S&P Index - 90 Year Historical Chart | MacroTrends

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