July 14, 2008
NASDAQs decline today marks the fourth Monday in a row that this index has opened the week with a loss. Since the beginning of May, the NASDAQ has fallen in seven of the past ten Mondays.
The S&P500s and the DJIA records are somewhat better, with todays markdown being their second consecutive Monday decline; but the S&P500s performance on Mondays since May 2008 is the best of these indices, with only four losses whereas the DJIA fell on six
Another continuing characteristic is the continuing pattern of alternate up and down days. Consider the S&P500 record since June 17. This index reversed its direction on fifteen days, and has just three occasions when prices moved in the same direction two days running.
The DJIA has a comparable situation, with only two days of price changes in the same direction, but ten days of alternate up and downs since June 25. Moreover this index had a similar run between May 5 and May 27: in those 18 days the DJIA had only three changes in the same direction, but there were 15 occurances where DJIA changed direction every day.
DJIA -.39 percent
NASDAQ - 1.06 percent
S&P500 -.94 percent