Jerome Powell’s tenure at the Federal Reserve began with a volatility shock. It’s ending with one of the strongest cross-asset rallies of the modern Fed era.

Powell’s eight years as Fed chair included COVID, the worst inflation shock in 40 years, the sharpest rate-hike cycle in decades, a regional banking scare, and repeated political pressure on the central bank.

Markets still delivered gains across almost every major asset class.

Powell spent much of his tenure as chair trying to prove he had the inflation-fighting credibility of former Fed Chair Paul Volcker, who is remembered for crushing the inflation of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The twist is that investors got the rally too.

According to Bespoke Investment Group, the S&P 500 (^GSPC) delivered a 14.7% annualized total return during Powell’s tenure, the third-best showing for any Fed chair since 1970.

But the bigger tell is breadth. Commodities, gold, and bonds also finished positive during Powell’s time as chair. In bonds, that final score masks one of the sharpest selloffs in modern history. Inflation and rate hikes crushed long-term government debt before the asset class recovered enough to finish higher in the final tally.

The path was anything but smooth. Powell took over in February 2018 just as “Volmageddon” was ripping through markets, a volatility shock that crushed popular bets against market turbulence. Two years later, the COVID crash forced the Fed into emergency mode, with rates slashed to near zero and credit markets under stress.

Then came the inflation fight. After calling inflation “transitory” through much of 2021, Powell’s Fed pivoted hard in 2022, lifting rates at the fastest pace in decades. Stocks sank into a bear market, bonds sold off, and investors questioned whether the Fed could cool inflation without breaking the economy.

Despite that rocky path, Yahoo Finance analysis of daily price data shows the S&P 500 price index is up roughly 160% since Powell became chair, and the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) is up nearly 250%.

The bigger lesson is that markets kept finding new engines during Powell’s tenure. The COVID rebound followed extraordinary monetary and fiscal support. Inflation pushed investors toward commodities and gold. The later stages of the cycle brought a megacap-led stock rebound, powered less by the Fed than by earnings, AI spending, and investor willingness to pay up for dominant growth companies.

That is what makes the scorecard so striking. Powell’s tenure was not defined by one market trade, one policy regime, or one asset class. It was a sequence of rallies across very different markets.