by Gary Alexander
June 2, 2026
We should stop fearing “another 1929” and pat ourselves on the back for surviving an even worse decade. As it turns out, the decade ending in 2008 – into early 2009 – was worse than the decline in the 1930s.
Specifically, a study by Ibbotson Associates in 2009 showed how the 1999-2008 decade was worse than any 10-year span in the 1930s. Ibbotson has kept price details on market performance over the last century, since 1926, obviously including the crash year of 1929 and the dismal 1930s, but in the 83-year period available then (1926 to 2009), the worst real (after inflation) performance before 2008 happened 1929 to 1938, with annual losses of –0.89% per year (-8.6% overall), while the 10-year loss at the end of 2008 delivered an annual decline of -1.4% per year (-13% for the decade) after inflation (in both cases).
What’s more, Ibbotson also analyzed each 120-month period, ending each month of each year for those 83-years. They found the last month of their study – February 28, 1999 to February 28, 2009 – delivered the worst 10-year market performance among the 880-monthly measurement periods since 1926.
Also, four of the worst 5 decade-long losses came around the end of 2008, going into 2009:
The Five Worst Market Decades Since 1926
Notice: No dates in the 1930s made the top five-worst market decades, and the worst three 10-year spans came in the first three-months of 2009. As I’ll show below, market sentiment then reached record lows.
60 Minutes’ Repeated Its Scary “1929” Warning – on Memorial Day Weekend, 2026
This is relevant because on May 24. 2006 – Memorial Day weekend, no less – CBS’s Sunday night talk (and fear-mongering) show, 60-Minutes, repeated their October 2025 interview with author Andrew Ross Sorkin on the parallels between now and 1929 – generating fears of a major market crash last October!
As I reported then, Sorkin made no such comparisons in his finely researched history book about the events of “1929,” but 60-Minutes (and other media) need to sell fear, not history, so they steered the interview into “chilling parallels” and then elected to repeat that segment on Memorial Day weekend.
They could have told us how far the market rose since last October, but that would be too embarrassing.
Their segment, titled, “Booms, Busts and Bubbles,” seeks to push the panic button right away, with this Website bait: “Stocks on Wall Street have rallied in recent months, but author Andrew Ross Sorkin sees a crash coming. The question is: When will the bubble pop, and how much will the market slump?”
This time around, I won’t review that hyper-ventilating scare piece again, but I will repeat my praise of Sorkin’s book for its historical research on both 1929, similar to his previous book on the 2008 crash, “Too Big to Fail.” In this case, I would also like to add some details from a 2009 book I helped edit:
The book I edited in 2009 was published by a major book vendor, John Wiley and Sons in 2010. We called it “The Evergreen Portfolio: Timeless Strategies to Survive and Prosper from the Investing Pros.”
The genesis of that book was the Atlanta investment team headed by Martin Truax and Ron Miller. At the time, I had been the chief MC of their “Atlanta Investment Conference” for 20-years, since its founding in 1988. Martin assembled a special conference in April 2009, right after the market’s lows in early March. Martin asked me to interview 15-speakers on video and audio tape about where the market was headed.
In the Evergreen book, I wrote two-chapters – one summarizing their views, and a second article on market history, and what it implies. First, in Chapter Two, I wrote up my interviews with 15 other speakers on “How Did We Get into This Mess? And What is the Best Way Out?” Then, in Chapter 4, I wrote, “How Fed Policy Fuels Market Cycles.” My concluding paragraph is worth a full quote here:
“The future is not carved in stone. The decisions that President Obama, Congress, and the Fed make in the next year will determine whether we have 7 or 10 more bad years or can look back to March 6-9, 2009 as a major market bottom. Voters have the final word: The mid-term elections of 2010 may rescue our portfolios. Recent history shows the market soars and federal spending is restrained when one part controls the White House and the other controls Congress. Ironically, political ‘gridlock’ may be our best hopes.” – My closing paragraph in “Evergreen Portfolio.”
As it turns out, the 2010 mid-terms delivered, in spades, doubled and redoubled. The House seats went from a 62-seat Democratic majority to a 62-seat Republican majority, a record swing of 124-seats. My New Orleans panelist Charles Krauthammer called it a “restraining order” on spending.
But back in 2009, our investment speakers, attendees and the nation at large didn’t see this coming.
Bearish Sentiment Peaked on the Actual DAY of the Market’s Bottom in 2009
In March 2009, at the market bottom, bearish sentiment set all-time record highs. First, the American Association for Individual Investors (AAII) sentiment poll reached a record high 70.3% bears on March 5, 2009, in their last poll before the market bottom of that cycle. Only 18.9% of investors were bullish, with 9.8% neutral, providing the widest bull-bear spread to that date – at +51.4 points).
The professionals weren’t any wiser. On the very date of the Dow’s bottom at 6,547 on March 9, 2009, The Wall Street Journal published an article titled: “The Case for Dow 5000,” but the opposite happened.
The Dow closed above 10,000 on October 14, 2009, rising by over 50% in barely seven months in 2009.
Graphs are for illustrative and discussion purposes only. Please read important disclosures at the end of this commentary.
I bring up this ancient history to put my April 2009 Atlanta speakers in a somewhat kinder light, since most of them predicted further declines in the market and economy. One of the five questions I asked each speaker (on audio and video tape, and for the book) was “what shape will the next recovery take?”
I explained the four basic choices they could make, summarized here from worst case to best case:
- An “L” shaped recovery goes down and stays down for a very long time.
- A “W” shaped recovery starts to recover but then falls into a second deep recession.
- A “U” shaped recovery stays down in the dumps for a long time before recovering.
- A “V” shaped recovery implies a quick and strong recovery with no follow-up decline.
Among my 15-taped experts, the majority (as on Wall Street and in the AAII polls) predicted an “L” shaped long-term recession. I wrote, at the time, “The general consensus was for an “L” non-recovery, but that only means that our eyes can’t see very far for now.” Here’s some of what nine of the bears said:
- “I believe we’re in an L that hasn’t reached its 90-degree bottom yet.”
- “I see an L ahead, even though we’ve seen a V in the stock market.”
- “I foresee a flat line, an L, very much like the 1970s.”
- “We’re more on the lines of an L, a very long recession.”
- “Before the bottom happens, we may see more social conflicts…the Dow could go below 1,000.”
- “There is a real potential for a catastrophic failure in our system.”
- “This has already been a longer recession, since the regular tools aren’t working.”
- “I see lots of ups and downs with quite a few W’s, perhaps a WWW….”
- “I wish I could create a Chinese character…more complex than your U-V-W-L options.”
That’s nine of our 15-analysts. Another four or five were neutral (with a “U” shaped recover), and the most bullish of the 15 was economist Mark Skousen, who predicted a “Dow above 14,280 within two-years, by 2011.” He wasn’t far off, as the Dow reached 12,876 two-years later, and 16,575 by late 2013. (The main authors, Martin Truax and Ron Miller, also had sound articles, with long-term bullish views).
Let me close with my own story. I also gave a talk at that April 2009 Georgia conference – later repeated in these pages as my second column for Louis Navellier’s early version of MarketMail – paralleling Mark Skousen’s predictions with a headline, “Historically deep declines imply historically strong recoveries.”
To my surprise, Matt Krantz, financial editor at USA Today, saw my article and recognized how bold and “out of the box” my forecast (published by Navellier) was at the time, so he called the Navellier office to get my phone number and rang me up. He wondered what made me think we actually had a chance for a historically strong recovery. I answered with some of my data-heavy details, and he liked what I said, so he published a short article on my Navellier post for USA Today, which was picked up by other media.
At that time, the editor of Louis Navellier’s newsletters (which I helped launch) told me, “You hit the Internet jackpot, Gary, Congratulations.” I didn’t know then, or even knew the term, but I had become a “media influencer.” I haven’t had another major media splash since 2009, but that was a flattering start.
So, in context and hindsight, I want to thank Louis Navellier for giving me the platform to write what I wrote then, and now. Being bullish was an unpopular stance then. In fact, my previous publisher seemed spooked by bearish fears and laid off bulls like me in late February 2009, while also cancelling the bullish newsletter I was editing then for another great positive mentor. So, as March opened, my nest egg was cut in half by the crash and I was jobless when Martin Truax invited me to MC a seminar where all the profits supported a wonderful charity, with no speaker fees, but my bullish views helped Louis decide to hire me.
So, thanks, Martin, and Louis! The Dow is now at 50,000, not 5,000, or 1,000, and we saw that coming…
All content above represents the opinion of Gary Alexander of Navellier & Associates, Inc.
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It’s Prime Time for Selling Covered Calls
Growth Mail by Gary Alexander
Forget the 1930s Market – The 2000-09 Crash Was Worse!
Global Mail by Ivan Martchev
What’s Behind This Late Cycle Acceleration?
Sector Spotlight by Jason Bodner
The Quietest Signals Often Have the Loudest Impact
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About The Author
Gary Alexander
SENIOR EDITOR
Gary Alexander has been Senior Writer at Navellier since 2009. He edits Navellier’s weekly Marketmail and writes a weekly Growth Mail column, in which he uses market history to support the case for growth stocks. For the previous 20-years before joining Navellier, he was Senior Executive Editor at InvestorPlace Media (formerly Phillips Publishing), where he worked with several leading investment analysts, including Louis Navellier (since 1997), helping launch Louis Navellier’s Blue Chip Growth and Global Growth newsletters.
Prior to that, Gary edited Wealth Magazine and Gold Newsletter and wrote various investment research reports for Jefferson Financial in New Orleans in the 1980s. He began his financial newsletter career with KCI Communications in 1980, where he served as consulting editor for Personal Finance newsletter while serving as general manager of KCI’s Alexandria House book division. Before that, he covered the economics beat for news magazines. All content of “Growth Mail” represents the opinion of Gary Alexander
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