May 24, 2011 Third Drop in a Row
The market closed with substantially smaller losses than yesterday and the day before. The biggest loser, NASDAQ was off -.46 percent; the DJIA declined -.20 percent while a mere -.08 percent hit the S&P500.
Todays negative triple is only the second such appearance this year. While 2011 is far from over, note that 2010 recorded five runs of three straight declines.
Note that so far this year, the market scored five positive three-day runs. That is a much better performance than the five scored in all of 2010. But these strings of successive gains may not be very meaningful. While the first year of this recovery, 2009, enjoyed nine sequences of five straight gains, the same number occurred in 2007, the year when prices hit their high.
Yesterdays projection for today, for higher prices, obviously did not materialize. As for tomorrow, based on the history of days following three straight declines, chances are even for (1) further losses or (2) higher prices.
DJIA -.20 percent
NASDAQ -.46 percent
S&P500 -.08 percent