Should You Invest in an S&P 500 ETF When the Market Is This Close to All-Time Highs? The Answer Is Surprisingly Simple.
The wrong move could mean leaving meaningful returns on the table.
Overview
There has been a lot of noise in the economy and stock market this year, but the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) -- the stock market's most important index -- is up 12.8% through Sept. 7 and trading near its all-time high. The S&P 500's performance has some investors feeling both grateful (who doesn't appreciate double-digit percentage gains?) and anxious, with a sense of "when will the run inevitably end?"
With the S&P 500 flirting with its all-time high, is now the time to fall back or continue investing in an S&P 500 ETF? It's almost certainly always the latter.
Details
What can sometimes surprise investors is just how often the S&P 500 has set all-time highs recently. In 2026 alone, it has set a new all-time high 27 times. That's one for every roughly 6.3 trading days leading up to Labor Day weekend. Here are the dates and what the S&P 500 closed at (note: S&P 500 ETFs trade in dollars, but the S&P 500 index is measured in points):
Source
Originally published at www.fool.com.