ART CASHIN: Here's Why This Massive Stock Market Rally Is Nothing Special

The S&P 500 is now withing a handful of points from its all-time record closing high.

But in terms of the pace of the rally, there's nothing special about this. This is according to BTIG's Dan Greenhaus (via Art Cashin),

From this morning's Cashin's Comments:

DéjÀ Vu, All Over Again – As media pundits trip over each other talking about the "longest equity bull run since….", we may all be losing perspective amidst the happy hype.

In his wonderful evening wrap-you for clients, the ever-alert, Dan Greenhaus, restored a little perspective to where we are.

There has been endless chatter about the terrific start to the year, about the great rotation and about growing optimism about economic and market fundamentals. Those are all worthy topics but we must advance one important point to put this in perspective; the S&P 500 is up just short of 9% YTD. That’s a good start to the year no doubt and better than what we saw in 2010 and 2011. But at this point in 2012? The S&P 500 was higher by 11% and as of 46 days into the year, 2013 is exactly where 2012 was. So while ebullience is spreading like wildfire, justified to some degree, there isn’t anything special about this rally, at least that we didn’t see just one year ago.

Here's the chart Greenhaus included in his note.