USMarketView

July 17, 2008

The NASDAQ scored another gain today, its third straight close in the positive column. Since January 2000, this index had 150 such closes; by contrast, three negative closes in a row occurred 128 times.

No record, since 2000, justifies the association of three straight positive or three straight negative days with either growth or decline in the NASDAQ. For example, in 2000, when the market fell, there were 15 occurrences of positive closes and 19 negative closes, three days in a row. In that year, stocks lost ten percent. But in the following year, when prices fell by thirteen percent, there were 22 runs of three positive days in a row, compared to only 17 runs of three straight negative days.

The DJIA and the S&P500 increased for the second day in a row. The three previous days saw these indices decline. Here again, as with the NASDAQ, there is no clear pattern associating such runs with either a rising or a falling market.

Indeed, on the day following this pattern of two positive closes/following three negative closes, the S&P500 experienced an equal number -21- of increases and decreases; whereas the DJIA scored 13 gains but suffered 15 losing days.

DJIA 1.19 percent

NASDAQ…… .78 percent

S&P500 .55 percent

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 12 042008000000Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:11:01 +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.