The stock market is in its longest stretch without a 2% sell-off since the financial crisis

Wall Street's ascent to grounds highs has travel with conspicuously small volatility.

The S&P 500 has gone 377 days without a 2.05% sell-off. That's the longest agelong for the benchmark since the large fiscal crisis, according to FactSet information compiled by CNBC. The scale hasn't experienced a summation of astatine slightest 2.15% successful that clip either.

This marketplace lull comes arsenic investors heap into megacap tech stocks, specified arsenic Nvidia, amid bets that artificial quality volition boost profits. Year to date, the S&P 500 is up much than 14%. Expectations of Federal Reserve complaint cuts person besides buoyed the wide marketplace scale successful 2024 arsenic caller information shows ostentation moving person to the cardinal bank's 2% goal.

"At a precocious level, the clouds of macro uncertainty person parted implicit the past 12 months arsenic receding ostentation provided much-needed clarity into the aboriginal way of monetary policy," said Adam Turnquist, main method strategist astatine LPL Financial. "The changing communicative from complaint hikes to complaint cuts and recessions to economical resilience helped resistance the VIX down to multiyear lows, yet shifting the backdrop for stocks to a debased volatility from precocious volatility regime."

Many investors see the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) the de facto fearfulness gauge connected the Street. Last month, it deed its lowest level going backmost to November 2020. On Friday, it traded astir 13, adjacent historically debased levels.

"[T]he debased VIX reflects the options market's complacency, with VIX astatine a three-year low," said Joseph Cusick, elder vice president and portfolio specializer astatine Calamos Investments. "This makes consciousness since institutions person been actively hedging; determination is nary urgency to merchantability underlying with these security products successful place."

It's unclear however agelong this low-volatility play volition last.

In 2017, the S&P 500 recorded conscionable 8 regular moves of much than 1%, portion the VIX fell to historical lows beneath 9. The pursuing year, however, volatility came backmost into the market, and the VIX surged supra 50 earlier easing.