52.3%.That’s the percentage of all trading days throughout the S&P 500’s history since 1928 that have been up days for the market. Even though just barely more than 50% of trading days have been up days, it has translated into a price change of 18,157% for the S&P 500.

Casinos are wildly profitable using a similar format. They only have to win slightly more than 50% of all bets made to make a tremendous amount of money. The beautiful thing about investing in the stock market is that you get to be the casino for once!

2019 has been a great year for the S&P 500 with a gain of more than 28%. As shown below, the index only needed to trade higher on 59.3% of days to generate a 28% gain. But positive days occurring 59.3% of the time in a trading year is actually very rare. Only five other years since 1928 have seen up days more consistently with the most recent coming in 1995 when 61.9% of all trading days were positive.  

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