[Abridged] Foundations: The Fate of the S&P 500’s Worst Stocks, the Y2K Analogue, and Time for Small Caps?

[Abridged] Foundations: The Fate of the S&P 500’s Worst Stocks, the Y2K Analogue, and Time for Small Caps?

Predicting Long Positions for Performance Through the Next Bear Market

Michael Burry

Oct 26, 2026

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[This is the 1500-word abridged version of the

main article

, which has more of everything.]

Following up on the last

Foundations

post,

Performance in the Next Bear Market & the Caldera under S. Park & Wall

, I took the same 45 years of S&P 500 Index data, and I separated the index’s stocks into three sets.

The

Broken

I separated into two - the merely

Broken

, down 20-40% from rolling 10-year highs and the truly

Busted

, down more than 40% at the October 6th S&P 500 record high. The

Leaders

are those within 10% of their 10-year rolling highs at that high.

I have done this for the S&P 500 as it stood,

repeatedly over the last 4 decades

, at record high market tops set on the precipice of bear markets and near-bear markets. Below, some of the collected data for each one.

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