Investors are more than happy to close the book on 2022, the first time in four years the S&P 500 closed with a loss and the worst performance in over a decade. Only the financial markets' collapse in 2008 produced a worse return for the index. 

But there is reason to be hopeful about the coming year because the S&P 500 has only rarely ever produced two consecutive years of losses. The bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000 actually led to three straight years of negative returns (helping to usher in the start of the so-called "lost decade").

But you have to go all the way back to the 1970s to find the next time the broad market index was down for two years running. 

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Source Fool.com