The Dow Jones Industrial Average notched its first “death cross” since March 2022 on Monday, in what some have described as the latest ominous development for stocks as the market looks to extend its November rebound rally.

This time around, two straight sessions in the green weren’t enough to keep the Dow out of death-cross territory, as the market’s recent three-month losing streak weighed on the blue-chip index’s 50-day moving average, while gains from earlier this year helped boost the 200-day moving average.

After more than a year of back-and-forth debate over whether the world’s largest economy could slip into a downturn, investors are settling into the surprising conclusion that the U.S. can manage to dodge one.

The Dow is on pace for its best run in 126 years.

If the Dow closes higher Thursday for a 14th consecutive session, that would be its longest run of consecutive gains since May 1897.

Should the Dow end the day higher today, and for a 15th straight day on Friday, that would mark the index’s longest daily winning streak ever.

The blue-chip index’s run is already at historic levels: The Dow on Wednesday notched its 13th straight day of gains, its best winning streak since 1987 and its highest level since February 2022.

Turmoil within the banking sector is likely to bring a "vicious" start to the end of the bear market in U.S. stocks, according to Morgan Stanley.

Michael Wilson, the chief U.S. equity strategist at Morgan Stanley and a longtime Wall Street bear, said in an analyst note on Monday that the stock market is in the early and painful stages of exiting the bear market than began in the summer.

"The last part of the bear can be vicious and highly correlated," he said. "Prices fall sharply via an equity risk premium spike that is very hard to prevent or defend in one’s portfolio."

Whether super-safe US Treasuries or the riskiest emerging equities, global stocks and bonds have lost a record $36 trillion in value over the past nine months in a wild selloff that engulfed assets right across the risk spectrum.

With the year heading into its last quarter, there is likely more pain ahead. Central banks are in full fire-fighting mode, making clear they intend to raise interest rates further to douse inflation, even if that leads to economic recession. 

A “superbubble” appears dangerously near its “final act” after the recent rally in U.S. stocks lured some investors back into the market just ahead of potential “tragedy,” according to Jeremy Grantham, the legendary co-founder of Boston-based investment firm GMO.

Grantham, who has repeatedly warned investors of a bubble in markets, said in a paper Wednesday that “superbubbles are events unlike any others” and share some common features.

Bear markets are an investor’s best friend. During major stock-market downtrends, you stand a better chance of building up a big lead over indexed investors. If your goal is to beat the market over the long term, then bear markets play a crucial role.

Of course, even when you beat a falling market, odds are that you still lose money in absolute terms. But “beating the market” is relative, not absolute. 

More than half of Americans think the U.S. has already entered a recession, new polling shows.

The latest IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism Index published on Friday found that 53 percent of Americans think the economy has gone into a recession, and 25 percent say they're unsure. Only 20 percent believe the country is not in a recession.

Even amid uncertainty, concerns have dramatically risen over the last month. Back in May, less than half of Americans—48 percent—said the economy was in a downturn while 23 percent said the U.S. was not in a recession.

In 1997, Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, while still an academic, wrote a famous historical study for the Brookings Institution: “Systematic Monetary Policy and the Effects of Oil Price Shocks” with Mark Gertler and Mark Watson.

It began by documenting that “essentially all the U.S. recessions of the past thirty years have been preceded by both oil price increases and a tightening of monetary policy.” So here we are again tightening monetary policy at a time of unaffordable oil price increases.

The months-long slide for the S&P 500 index has officially thrown stocks far enough off of their all-time highs to be considered a bear market.

Since the beginning of 2022, the S&P 500 index is down nearly 21% as of Monday afternoon, with companies like Amazon and Google parent Alphabet leading the way with their 39% and 27% respective drops. Elon Musk’s Tesla has also lost 45% of its market value since January — shaving more than $500 billion off of its market cap.