Small Advance

March 31, 2008

The NASDAQ gained .79 percent, as Monday became the first day in the last three for an uptick; the S&P500, also up for the first time since last Tuesday, rose .57 percent.

While the DJIA increased by a mere .38 percent, in doing so it reversed four successive declines.


This pattern of closes –a positive day after four declines—has played 29 other times since the beginning of 2000. The median gain is .44 percent, not much different from the DJIA’s close today.


The pattern for the other two indices is a positive close after three declines. The NASDAQ experienced this 61 times, with a median recovery of 1.27 percent, substantially greater than today.

With the median of .62 percent for the S&P500, for 72 identical occurrences, the market today failed to reach the median gains associated with this closing pattern in this century.

Correction:

The March 28 report was ahead of itself, by calculating the first quarter’s performance as of Friday’s close. Instead, today, March 31 marks the end of the first quarter. While the analysis and comparisons in that issue remain unchanged, the losses of the first quarter are - 7.55 percent (instead of the published -7.90 percent) for the DJIA, -14.07 percent instead of -14.75 percent for the NASDAQ, and -9.92 percent, rather than -10.43 percent for the S&P500.


DJIA .38 percent
NASDAQ .79 percent
S&P500 .57 percent

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