Losing just -.02 percent, the S&P500 closed lower for the first time since July 6. In reality, the DJIA did not do much better; yet the plus .04 percent change let this index stay positive for the seventh day in a row. The NASDAQ also continued positive, at up .35 percent, thus raising its positive run to seven. Our record finds no other day with this combination of changes. Accordingly, a next day outlook becomes impossible.
Even assuming that the S&P500 closed higher, only four such closes exist, and since these, on the next day, are split evenly between advance and decline, history fails to provide a perspective for tomorrow.
Though the recent gains have brought the market higher, prices remain substantially below their mid-April tops. Nevertheless, the comparison of the current recovery with the time path of the last, 2000/2007 cycle yields a promising outlook. While the earlier, steeper decline between 2007 and 2009, clearly was alarming, by this stage, 690 trading days into the cycle, values have climbed higher and earlier than the previous time.
That much can be said without contradiction; but projecting the future on the basis of a parallel between now and then, to yield a far stronger price, and possible faster, recovery requires evidence more substantial than now exists. It seems more essential to observe the near future. Will it continue to match the previous cycle then proceed with a comparable but higher price path? Or instead, will prices descend first to that earlier trough thus delaying, or even stopping, the return to the 2007 highs? DJIA .04 percent
NASDAQ .35 percent
S&P500 -.02 percent