Patience has proven invaluable to long-term investors, with every stock market correction, crash, and bear market eventually put into the rearview mirror by a bull market rally. But over shorter periods, Wall Street's benchmark index, the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC), has proved unpredictable.

In successive years since this decade began, the S&P 500 has bounced between bear and bull markets. Although some investors define a bull market as one which has rallied at least 20% from a recent low, there's little question that a new bull market has emerged when a major stock index reaches a new all-time high. With the S&P 500 recently taking out its previous high, we can proclaim without a shadow of a doubt that we're in a bull market (which actually began more than 15 months ago).

Image source: Getty Images.

Continue reading

Source Fool.com