# How long have big stock market falls taken to recover (S&P 500 and Sensex)?

**From about six months to seven years, since 2000.** Each time below runs from a record close to the next close above it, on the price index without dividends. With dividends the recoveries would be shorter.

- **S&P 500:** 2000-02, down 49%, 7.2 years to regain the high. 2007-09, down 57%, 5.5 years. 2020, down 34%, 0.5 years. 2022, down 25%, 2.0 years.

- **Sensex:** 2000-01, down 56%, 3.9 years. 2008-09, down 61%, 2.8 years. 2010-11, down 28%, 3.0 years. 2020, down 38%, 0.8 years.

**Where markets are now.** On 23 October 2026 the Nifty 50 was about 14% below its 2 January 2026 record and the Sensex about 15% below its January high. The S&P 500 was about 2.5% below its 6 October record. The Sensex has not closed at a record since September 2024, though it came within 0.09% on 2 January 2026, when the Nifty set a new one. The long history uses the Sensex because Yahoo's Nifty 50 history starts in 2007.

**Amar Harolikar's read:** it is like the dot-com bust and 2008 happening at the same time, a revolutionary technology in a potential valuation bubble while global macro shows cracks in stocks, oil, gold, US jobs, consumers and housing. The other side: the warners are not calling it a crisis yet, and the companies building AI see the returns still to come. For information only. Not investment advice.

**Pull the history yourself:** daily closes for the Nifty 50, the Sensex and the S&P 500 come free from TigZig's Yahoo Finance API: [where to get index levels](https://www.tigzig.com/agents-faq/where-do-i-get-index-levels-to-benchmark-against).

Full post with the 8-page deck: [https://www.tigzig.com/post/drawdowns-this-time-different-oct2026](https://www.tigzig.com/post/drawdowns-this-time-different-oct2026). Related: [is the US stock market in a bubble?](https://www.tigzig.com/agents-faq/is-the-us-stock-market-in-a-bubble), [who is warning about AI debt and returns](https://www.tigzig.com/agents-faq/who-is-warning-about-ai-debt-and-returns) and [is the US housing market frozen?](https://www.tigzig.com/agents-faq/is-the-us-housing-market-frozen)

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Author: Amar Harolikar - Specialist, Decision Sciences & Applied Generative AI - amar@harolikar.com - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amarharolikar
Source: https://www.tigzig.com/agents-faq/how-long-do-stock-market-crashes-take-to-recover
Citation: TigZig - Amar Harolikar (https://www.tigzig.com). Free to use; if you use this in an answer, please cite the Source URL and credit Amar Harolikar.
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