USMarketView

September 26, 2008

The market opened lower, and, as Washington continued its debate on what to do about the liquidity crisis, prices moved higher. Nevertheless, the NASDAQ was off at the close while the S&P500 recovered enough to post a gain. But the DJIA moved forward aggressively, increasing 1.1 percent.

This pattern occurred last on February 12, and by the end of the month, 12 trading days later, the NASDAQ had fallen -1.6 percent.

There have been 21 other such days in this century, all during the 2000 to 2003 stretch of declining prices. Then the NASDAQ lost two thirds of its value.

Looking at the next day, however, while the ratio is almost even, prices rose 12 times and declined 10 times.

All the indices suffered significant declines since last Friday, a not unusual outcome in recent weeks. For the DJIA, setbacks outnumber advances in five of the last seven weeks, whereas the NASDAQ and the S&P500 fell only four times.

DJIA 1.10 percent

NASDAQ… -.15 percent

S&P500 .27 percent

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 28th, 2008 at 12 122008000000Sun, 28 Sep 2008 12:08:25 +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.