For almost six years, one of the most powerful bull markets on record has coexisted with the weakest economic recovery since World War II. This month’s selloff in stocks shows how much investors want that to change.

In the latest fit of nerves, market volatility soared to a three-year high and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index dropped as much as 9.8 percent in the 26 days ending Oct. 15. Everything from Ebola to Europe and the Federal Reserve were blamed for the retreat, the fourth to exceed 3 percent this year.

Another explanation is that investors are finding their patience taxed after waiting five years for economic growth to catch up with the market. From March 2009 through June 2014, the S&P 500 has increased 4.7 percent a quarter, about five times faster than gross domestic product, data compiled by Bloomberg show. That’s the biggest gap since at least 1947.

“I don’t think the dispersion can sustain at the level that it did, which is why the market is struggling,” Daniel Genter, who oversees about $4.5 billion as chief executive officer at Los Angeles-based RNC Genter Capital Management, said in a phone interview on Oct. 22. “The market wants to see growth going in the right direction or it’s going to be upset.”

As quickly as markets lurched, they recovered, with the Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index dropping 27 percent last week as the S&P 500 increased 4.1 percent. Data on housing and consumer confidence showed acceleration in the American economy, while the European Central Bank added to bond purchases, quieting concern about a region whose economy is at risk of falling into a third recession since 2009.

The S&P 500 fell 0.5 percent at 10:11 a.m. in New York.

Market Signal

Stocks have historically started to climb before GDP, anticipating economic expansions by an average of two months, data beginning in 1927 show. In 14 recessions since then, the S&P 500 posted gains of 12 percent in the quarter prior to a rebound in GDP. That happened in 2009, when the index rose 15 percent in the April-June quarter, the last of the recession.

Anyone using above-average GDP gains as a signal to buy would have missed the 190 percent advance in the S&P 500 since March 2009 that rivals almost any rally in the past nine decades. While economic growth has held below 3 percent, stocks rallied as the U.S. unemployment rate fell to 5.9 percent from a 26-year high of 10 percent in October 2009, interest rates stayed at record lows and new home sales climbed 73 percent since 2011.

Better Guide

“I don’t think you can find a relationship, a consistent ratio, between economic growth and the stock market,” Laszlo Birinyi, president of Birinyi Associates Inc. in Westport, Connecticut, said in a phone interview. “Maybe what we saw in 2010, 2011 was a stronger market than the economy. Maybe going forward, we’ll see the economy catch up and the stock market may not have strong gains.”

Throughout the rally, corporate profits have been a better guide than GDP growth for when to buy stocks. With S&P 500 12- month earnings doubling to $103.21 a share since the end of 2009, the index trades at a price-earnings ratio of 19, compared with its average of 25 since 1990, data compiled by Bloomberg and S&P Dow Jones Indices show.

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