April 9, 2008
With only two positive closes in the past six sessions, the NASDAQ declined most of today, to close off another -1.13 percent; meanwhile the DJIA and the S&P500 also fell, but just for the second time in as many days.
Consider the S&P500s performance since last August and today; in the last 159 trading days, it had 19 of these two-in-a-row negatives. That means 11.9 percent of all sessions were in the red two days in a row. Moreover the median loss on the second day, of -.84 percent, is just about the same as todays -.81 percent decline.
In contrast, during the previous expansion, from the trough of 2002 to the fall of 2007, only 9.9 percent of the 1327 trading days were two-in-a-row-negatives; and that median loss was limited to -.55 percent. Moreover, in the preceding decline, 14.6 percent of the 676 trading days were double day losers, and that median loss, at -.84 percent, was the same, -.84 percent, as the one between last fall and today.
As for three down days in a row, there have been seven of these, or 11.8 percent of all closes since the peak of last August; that compares to 7.2 percent of triple down days in the earlier decline that ended in October 2002.
DJIA -.39 percent
NASDAQ -1.13 percent
S&P500 -.81 percent