Rising recession fears pushed U.S. stocks briefly into a bear market on Friday with the S&P 500's decline from its all-time high in January reaching 20% at one point. A dramatic late-day reversal pushed the benchmark slightly into the green for the day at the closing bell.
The S&P 500 finished 0.01% higher to 3,901.36 on Friday after falling as much as 2.3% earlier in the session. At the day's lows, the S&P 500 was 20.9% below its intraday high in January. The index closed about 19% below its record.
There's no official bear market designation on Wall Street. Some will count Friday's decline at the intraday lows as confirmation of a bear market, whereas some strategists may say it's not official until it closes 20% off its high. Regardless, it's the biggest downturn of this magnitude since the rapid bear market in March 2020 at the onset of the pandemic.
"Stocks are still liberally priced and the psychology that drove them upward for a decade has turned negative," wrote George Ball, chairman at investment firm Sanders Morris Harris. "The average bear market lasts a year (338 days, more precisely). This downturn has run for only one-third of that, so it probably has more downside room to run, albeit punctuated by interim rallies"...
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