View from the Observation Deck 

1. A "bull market" is generally defined as a sustained period of rising stock prices.
2. The current bull market, as measured by the S&P 500 Index, just hit 2,824 days as of 11/30/16, which equates to roughly 94 months. It ranks as the second-longest U.S. equity bull market in history, according to Bespoke Investment Group.
3. The longest U.S. equity bull market lasted 4,494 days (12/4/87-3/24/00), according to Bespoke.
4. Keep in mind when looking 2,824 days into the longest bull market, that year (1995) was near the beginning of the "internet revolution," which ran until March 2000. In other words, a unique economic event.
5. Perhaps the statistic that sticks out the most is the size of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet in November 2016 relative to where it stood in August 1995. The Fed's quantitative easing initiatives in response to the 2008-2009 financial crisis helped drive its balance sheet to its current nosebleed level.
6. By buying more than $2 trillion dollars of bonds (Treasuries and mortgages) and dropping the federal funds rate to nearly zero, the Fed was successful in keeping short-term and longer-term interest rates artificially low for many years, in our opinion.
7. For equity investors, the low-rate climate is still a potential tailwind moving forward. President-Elect Donald Trump's pro-growth economic policies, such as infrastructure spending, pruning back government regulations and reducing corporate tax rates, could add to that tailwind if enacted, in our opinion.

This chart is for illustrative purposes only and not indicative of any actual investment. The illustration excludes the effects of taxes and brokerage commissions and other expenses incurred when investing. Investors cannot invest directly in an index. The S&P 500 Index is a capitalization-weighted index comprised of 500 stocks used to measure large-cap U.S. stock market performance.

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