March 13, 2009
It could be too early to celebrate a pending market recovery if it is based on todays fourth positive close in a row. While 14 of these occurred in this century, and 60 between 1950 and 2000, meaning that the recent rate of 1.55 per year is larger than the earlier 1.2 per year, an analysis of the circumstances surrounding these data is less reassuring.
All 14 of the 21st century days came in years of market decline whereas all 60 of the 20th century events fell in positive years.
Moreover, on the following day -like this coming Monday- eight negative days outnumber the six gainers. Furthermore the largest increases comes to just 1.17 percent, while three of the losing days fell more than minus one percent, and one, the NASDAQ result, dropped -3.90 percent.
DJIA .75 percent
NASDAQ .38 percent
S&P500 .77 percent