Updated November 9, 2026 · Independent. No predictions, no products, no ads, no fund or advisor money.

How long does the stock market take to recover from a crash?

Short answer: In the eight S&P 500 drops of 20% or more since 1950 (using monthly prices), the time from the old high back to the old high ranged from 6 months (2020) to about 7½ years (1973). The typical (median) case took about 2½ years from peak to full recovery, and about 20 months from the bottom. Every one recovered.

Every 20%+ drop since 1950

Peak	Bottom	Fall	Peak to bottom	Bottom back to old high	Total
Dec 1961	Jun 1962	-22%	6 mo	1 yr 3 mo	1 yr 9 mo
Dec 1968	Jun 1970	-29%	1 yr 6 mo	1 yr 9 mo	3 yr 3 mo
Jan 1973	Dec 1974	-43%	1 yr 11 mo	5 yr 7 mo	7 yr 6 mo
Aug 1987	Dec 1987	-27%	4 mo	1 yr 7 mo	1 yr 11 mo
Aug 2000	Feb 2003	-44%	2 yr 6 mo	4 yr 3 mo	6 yr 9 mo
Oct 2007	Mar 2009	-51%	1 yr 5 mo	4 yr	5 yr 5 mo
Feb 2020	Mar 2020	-34%	1 mo	5 mo	6 mo
Dec 2021	Oct 2022	-20%	10 mo	1 yr 2 mo	2 yr

S&P 500 price index, monthly prices (price only, dividends not included), except 2020, which uses daily closes. Monthly prices smooth out short drops, so a few declines that briefly topped 20% on a daily basis, like 1966 and 1980–82, don't appear here. With dividends reinvested, recoveries would generally be shorter.

What the history shows

Deep drops took longer. The three falls of 40% or more (1973, 2000, 2007) each took about 5½ to 7½ years from peak to new high. Drops in the 20–30% range mostly recovered in about 2 years or less.
Fast falls can mean fast recoveries. 2020 fell 34% in about a month and was back in about 5 months. 1987's crash recovered in under 2 years.
The bottom is only visible afterward. In 2000–2002, the fall lasted 2½ years. Anyone who "waited for the bottom" had to sit through many false rallies.
Price isn't the whole story. People who kept contributing during a drop bought shares at lower prices, so their own accounts typically recovered sooner than the index did.

What that means for the next one

Nobody knows how deep or long the next drop will be, including us. The useful question isn't "when will it recover?" but "would my plan still work if this one is a 2020, or if it's a 1973?" If the answer depends on guessing which, the plan needs work, and the time to fix it is before the drop.

Write your plan down now, while you're calm. We'll email it back to you, with this history, the day the market falls →

Sources and method

S&P 500 monthly price data (Robert Shiller's dataset, via github.com/datasets/s-and-p-500); 2020 from daily S&P 500 closes (FRED series SP500).
A drop is counted from a monthly high to the lowest month at least 20% below it; recovery is the first month back at or above the old high.