Markets have powered through previous crises
Market downturns are painful, but history shows they’re common. Over the long term, stocks have been resilient.
Market Volatility
Market downturns are painful, but history shows they’re common. Over the long term, stocks have been resilient.
Sources: Capital Group, Standard & Poor's. As of December 31, 2025. Data is indexed to 100 as of January 1, 1987, based on cumulative total returns for the S&P 500 Index. Shown on a logarithmic scale.
Artificial Intelligence
Earnings growth is driving today’s stock gains — a sharp contrast to the dot-com period when share prices far outpaced profits.
LEFT: Sources: Capital Group, Bloomberg. Data aggregates forward 12-month net income ("forward earnings") and market capitalization ("market cap") for the “Four Horsemen” of the dot-com era: Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, and Dell, four of the largest and best-performing companies of that period. Indexed to 100 on January 1, 1998. As of December 31, 2001.
RIGHT: Sources: Capital Group, Bloomberg. Data aggregates forward 12-month net income ("forward earnings") and market capitalization ("market cap") for Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Meta, Broadcom, Alphabet, seven of the largest AI-exposed companies. Data indexed to 100 on January 1, 2020. As of December 31, 2025.
Elections
History shows markets strengthened once election-related uncertainty lifted.
Sources: Capital Group, RIMES, Standard & Poor's. Calculations use Election Day as the starting date in all election years, and November 5th as a proxy for the starting date in other years. Only midterm election years are shown in the chart. As of December 31, 2025.
Global equities
Declining interest rates, government stimulus and a string of trade deals have brightened earnings estimates for 2026.
Sources: Capital Group, FactSet, MSCI, Standard & Poor's. Estimated annual earnings growth is represented by the mean consensus earnings per share estimates for the years ending December 2025 and 2026, respectively, across the S&P 500 Index (U.S.), the MSCI Europe Index (Europe), the MSCI Japan Index (Japan), the MSCI Emerging Markets Index (Emerging markets) and MSCI China Index (China). Estimates are as of December 31, 2025.