How the U.S. Stock Market Behaves in 2026

Globalization briefly made the market more volatile, but the U.S. stock market is less risky and more insulated ever. Despite global interconnectedness, the wealthiest companies remain apart from the entire globe.

Many Americans believe the stock market is an overly volatile system akin to gambling.  While we can disprove that easily, it has had some tumultuous moments in its history.  However, we are in a moment where the market is less prone to volatility, less reactive to global events, and more insulated than ever before.

But the reason for this decreasing volatility may be what hurts us in the long run, since it simultaneously exacerbates societal inequity.  The market in 2026 is different from the market of the past, and we are just beginning to learn what that means for building wealth, the power of different individuals, and the future of American society.

A Brief History of the American Exchange

The New York Stock Exchange came into existence 199 years before I did, on May 17, 1792.  This was just five years after the signing of the Constitution, and the financial structure of the United States would become as quintessential an American quality as the ideals surrounding the country’s founding.  In fact, the Exchange in New York predates the United States of America, existing in some form since the early 1600s.

The New York Stock Exchange continued to grow throughout the 1800s with modernizations like stock tickers and telephones that allowed Americans from outside New York City to participate in the Exchange.  The market, like other global markets at the time, was volatile throughout the nineteenth century as it reacted to wars, current events, and financial panic.  While the market did increase throughout the century as a whole, recovering from moments of panic often took years.

Most of us know about the 1929 stock market crash that brought on the Great Depression.  At the time, many investors were purchasing stocks with borrowed money.  Brokers tried to sell stocks to cover debts, triggering a race to the bottom that plummeted the market, primarily because it had been previously bolstered by artificial wealth.  The crash and subsequent Great Depression swayed an entire generation’s opinion about the stock market as it took the market much longer to recover than other crashes.

Artificial wealth created by excessive borrowing caused the 2008 crash as well.  Housing prices sailed to artificially high levels due to insufficient borrowing requirements, and individuals could no longer afford their mortgage payments, prompting this housing “bubble” to burst.  Homeowners struggled because they could not afford their homes, and banks struggled since they were no longer collecting on the many mortgages they provided with insufficient borrowing requirements.

Despite this catastrophe, the market was back to its previous level by 2013.  While five years seems like a long time for a person that hoped to retire in 2008 who had to wait until 2013, it was a significantly shorter recovery than 1929.  And the market absolutely boomed the next two years after 2013 to put even more distance between 2008 highs: I know because I graduated college and started investing more intentionally in 2013, and I was fortunate to experience immediate growth.

The Market is Less Reactive Now

The biggest market corrections started with financial catastrophes rooted in the overuse of borrowed money.  These, and countless other blips throughout U.S. history, also followed significant global events like wars or other disasters.  These global events impacted the flow of money throughout the global market, stunting economic growth including the U.S. market.

With an increasingly connected world, it would make sense to think that any global crisis would impact the U.S. market even more today than it did in the past.  Strangely, that is not the case.  Take the COVID-19 pandemic.  In mid-February 2020, U.S. markets began to drop with fear of a global economic shutdown.  They tumbled until late March, reacting to this global crisis as one would expect in an interconnected world.  However, the S&P 500 regained all those losses in August 2020.  Only five months after hitting that early 2020 low point—before a vaccine existed, before schools were back in person in most places, before travel was normal, and before there was any hope for jumping back into pre-2020 life—the market already bounced back like a global pandemic was a casual event.  The S&P 500 grew by 18.4% for the entire year in 2020.  

The U.S. market still reacts to global crises, but the reaction is fleeting and increasingly removed.  Market declines are quickly recuperated in days or weeks, months at the worst, but not years.  Even the S&P 500’s 18.11% decline in 2022 was followed by 26.29% growth in 2023.  Many individuals will probably say that we are just between devastating market corrections, but I disagree.  I think the U.S. market behaves differently today than when I first studied it back in high school in 2006, and I believe that means less economic fear for investors but more fear for society’s longevity.

How the Market Works in 2026

The largest companies comprise the S&P 500, meaning most of us who invest in index funds usually invest in these large companies.  The 500th largest company on June 29, 2026, is Molson Coors Beverage Company, producer of Coors and many other beers, and is valued at $7.21 billion.  The chairman of the company, Geoff Molson, has an estimated net worth between $1 billion and $1.5 billion.  The last company on the S&P 500 is worth billions, and its chairman is even an individual billionaire.

The 499 companies that come before Molson Coors Beverage Company are larger.  There are probably some where individual stakeholders are only multimillionaires, but the number with billionaires steering the ship is greater.  I point this out because nobody needs $1 billion.  There is nothing you can buy to significantly improve your life with $1 billion that you cannot buy with $100 million, but the owners of these companies continue working to grow their wealth, and the company’s wealth, to extravagant levels.

This is an extravagant addiction to earning money.  Rather than critiquing this addiction, I want to point out two outcomes of an addition to excessive wealth accumulation:

1. It increases societal inequity.

2. It makes the market more resilient to outside forces.

You already knew the first point, but it is important enough to state.  If someone with $1 billion experiences 10% returns, they realize $100,000,000.  One-hundred million dollars.  If someone who retired with $2 million dollars experiences 10% returns, they realize $200,000.  That feels like a great return until you look at the nine-figure comparison.  If the billionaire and the comfortable retiree are invested in the same stocks at the same percentages of their wealth, the billionaire’s wealth will grow 500x more than the comfortable retiree due to market returns.

Money grows money, and the more money someone has, the easier it is for that money to grow.  This increases inequity.  The fact that the stock market always goes up can enrich anyone, but it is disproportionately enriching a small amount of extremely wealthy people.

But you can capitalize on this: People who love making money will do just about anything to keep making money—even if there is a war, pandemic, or new economic turmoil.  The wealth explosion of the largest U.S. companies means that if you invest in the S&P 500, you will get wealthier whenever the billionaires get wealthier.  Your returns will be much smaller, but you earn money as long as they earn money.

Their wealth is so great that they can control entire supply lines, adjust to acquire materials from different parts of the world, and often use their wealth to overpower countries.  The wealth is so huge that it insulates the U.S. market from outside turmoil because these billionaires can keep operating no matter what happens in the world.  Realities on the ground do not phase them because their lives are so removed, and they are pulling the entire S&P 500 with them.

Those hurt the most by this reality are the individuals without investments.  While I make 500x less in returns than a low-dollar billionaire, someone without any investments does not make any money.  The billionaires’ wealth and my growing wealth will drive up costs across the board.  Anyone lacking investments entirely will be left behind.  This is how inequity happens.  The gap between the billionaires and those without any investments keeps increasing at increasing rates.  The gap between the wealthiest billionaires and the “poorest” billionaires is even increasing.  But inequity hits those without investments the hardest.

What You Can Do in 2026

Hopefully, your initial takeaway is that you must be invested in the market.  You can only benefit from the billionaires’ wealth accumulation addiction if you invest.  Investing does not mean you are encouraging their behavior.  You are just protecting yourself and making sure you keep up financially.

You can also invest without the fear that previously existed since the companies in the S&P 500 are so insulated from the world.  The billionaire class has become significantly stronger than it was in 2008, and I cannot fathom a similar tumbling of the market as it stands today.  This could change in the years to come, but the strength of the billionaires (and trillionaire) limits market volatility in the U.S. market.

Continue investing more and more as much as possible.  When you get to that beautiful point of “enough” that I am fortunate to experience, take it upon yourself to limit the compounding inequity.  You cannot stop it, even if you have grown some wealth and become a low-dollar millionaire.  That is nothing compared to a trillionaire.  But you can start empowering those around you by alleviating their fears and misperceptions around investing.  We need investors of all genders, races, religions or beliefs, sexualities, political affiliations, and more if we want to fix a future society with significantly more inequity than we have today.  We can only do that if enough of us have enough so we can focus on helping society as a whole.

I hope you become the person I help start or expedite a wealth building journey for good today.  The U.S. market is less risky than it has been at any point since 1792, but risk-limited because the billionaires running the largest companies are too powerful to be touched.  Make a reasonable amount of wealth, then get out of the wealth accumulation game to pivot to help others.  I have, and it feels more rewarding than living to work for these wealthy individuals.  It also feels powerful to leave the wealth accumulation obsession that the billionaires cannot quit.  But we need more of us to make real changes.  

In 1792, the New York Stock Exchange became a pillar that would define American culture for more than two centuries.  But five years earlier, we committed to “promote the general welfare.”  It is time we prioritize those foundational words to increase access to wealth.