Amid growing uncertainty about how much farther stocks can rise as the economy recovers from the pandemic, the S&P 500 index has produced 50 record closing highs so far this year, says an article in MarketWatch.

Stock-market historians are looking to the past to try to answer that question. It’s notable that registering 50 or more record closes for the S&P 500 has only happened 7 times in history. However, the year following those record-high the gains edged lower, with average declines of 0.23% and a median drop of 3.48%, the article notes.

Past performance is no indication of future results, and it’s hard to say what the S&P 500 will do next year based on these small data sets. Factor in the pandemic, concerns about rising inflation, and the potential of monetary policy missteps, and the task of predicting market performance becomes even more difficult.

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