USMarketView

April 1, 2008

All three indices added more than three percent to their value today. It was their best performance since March 18 and March 11. Indeed, daily jumps exceeding today’s increases occurred just 16 other times for the S&P500 and 15 times for the DJIA since January 1, 2000. The NASDAQ, because of its technology boom, of course, had 55 such closes.

While today was the first day of the second quarter, again, all three indices scored the largest proportionate gain, for the opening day of the second quarter in their history. For the DJIA and the S&P500 our records extend back to 1950, while the NASDAQ series starts at its inception, in February 1971.

In this century, the median change for this first trading date in April, is less than .25 percent for the DJIA and the S&P500; while the median for the NASDAQ is negative: -.05 percent. Moreover the same result holds for the period before 2000.

DJIA 3.11 percent
NASDAQ 3.67 percent
S&P500 3.59 percent

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 12 042008000000Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:18:07 +0000 and is filed under Market Report. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.