Bear Market Breadth: How Many Stocks Are Really in a Bear Market?
The share of each index's members trading more than 20% below their own 252-session high — S&P 500, Nasdaq-100, Dow 30 and a Russell-2000-style cohort, daily since 2011 from our own price history. The index can sit at record highs while half its stocks are in private bear markets; this is the gauge that shows it — with the contrarian base rates behind every reading.
Today's breadth answer
Breadth repairingAs of the August 21, 2026 close, damage is widest in Nasdaq-100: 43.6% of members (44 of 101) are more than 20% below their own highs. Nasdaq-100 is the most unusual relative to its own history at the 89th percentile, with 43.6% in bear markets. Bear-market participation has fallen across all four cohorts over the past 21 sessions, so breadth is repairing rather than deteriorating. High readings have historically been contrarian, but today’s actual quartile—not the most extreme bucket—is the relevant comparison below.
Sources, methodology & freshnessLast updated 2026-08-21 · Open ↓Close ↑
Today sits in the third quartile. That bucket preceded +2.2% average SPY returns over the next quarter versus +3.1% across all days. That is historical context. It does not forecast the next quarter.
Where the damage is today
Raw percentages are not directly comparable across indexes: small caps normally carry more drawdown damage than the Dow. Read the bar for the level, then the percentile for how unusual that level is within the same index's history.
Current constituent drawdown
Click a row to open its history and forward-return study.
Share of members in a bear market — S&P 500
What followed each reading — S&P 500
Forward SPY returns from every day since 2011, bucketed by this index's own bear-share quartiles. The highest readings have been contrarian, but today's percentile can fall into a different bucket. The highlighted row is the comparison that actually matches the current reading.
Third quartile returns have been below the all-day baseline
S&P 500 readings in this bucket preceded +2.25% average SPY returns over the next 63 sessions versus +3.10% across all days. The bucket was positive 70% of the time versus 75% overall. That is a 0.85-point historical return difference. It is not a forecast.
| Bear-share bucket | Next 21 sessions | Next 63 sessions | N |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lowest quartile (few stocks in bear) | +0.86% · 69%↑ | +2.13% · 79%↑ | 986 |
| Second quartile | +0.54% · 65%↑ | +1.67% · 68%↑ | 985 |
| Third quartiletoday | +0.64% · 65%↑ | +2.25% · 70%↑ | 979 |
| Highest quartile (most stocks in bear) | +2.18% · 70%↑ | +6.55% · 84%↑ | 982 |
| All days (baseline) | +1.05% · 67%↑ | +3.10% · 75%↑ | 3,932 |
Forward returns on SPY closes; overlapping windows. Current members applied across history — the standard construction for this chart, which slightly flatters past readings (survivorship). Base rates, not signals.
Today sits in the third quartile. That bucket preceded +2.2% average SPY returns over the next quarter versus +3.1% across all days. That is historical context. It does not forecast the next quarter.
How Bear Market Breadth Works
- 1Each stock vs its own highFor every member of the index, we track its closing price against its own trailing 252-session high. More than 20% below that high is the standard definition of an individual bear market; more than 10% below is a correction. The index can sit near record highs while many of its members are 20, 30, 40% off theirs.
- 2Count the share, dailyThe headline series is the percentage of members in a bear market each day, computed across the actual membership: S&P 500 and Dow 30 from State Street's daily ETF holdings, Nasdaq-100 from Nasdaq's own list, and a Russell-2000-style cohort (stocks ranked 1,001-3,000 by market cap in our universe — iShares walls its holdings file, so we build the honest approximation and label it).
- 3The survivorship caveat, stated plainlyToday's members are applied across history — the standard construction for this chart (including the viral versions), but it means past readings slightly understate historical stress: the weakest stocks of past years were later removed from the indexes. Treat deep history as directionally right, not precise.
- 4Attach the base ratesFor each index we bucket every day since 2011 by the bear share's own quartiles and show what the index ETF did over the following month and quarter. The pattern is contrarian: the highest readings preceded above-baseline returns — washed-out breadth marked exhaustion more often than acceleration.