May 3, 2011 Prices Fall for Second Day
The market moved down again, with the NASDAQ and S&P500 losses about twice as large as the day before. The DJIA went up by only .15; that change is so small, that it failed to round up to the .01 percent level.
This pattern of changes, minus two for the NASDAQ and S&P500 with the DJIA counted as plus one, is infrequent: it occurred on 38 closes going back to 1950, with just 16 since the beginning of 2000. Todays diagram plots these, as well as the S&P500.
Actually, the indicated percent change is for the following day. In the past, these were distributed almost equally, with nine gains (green Empty Square) and seven losses (red Solid Square). Furthermore, the equality of the number of higher and lower prices for the next day extends also to their occurrence whether the price trend is up or down.
Hence, the pattern methodology fails to pinpoint any meaningful statistical measure for anticipating the direction of price changes tomorrow.
DJIA No Change
NASDAQ -.78 percent
S&P500 -.34 percent
