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          January 11, 2012                 A Rare Pattern

 

The DJIA lost  -.11 percent today, its first decline after two gains in a row. The NASDAQ, however, added  .31 percent, the fourth straight increase, while the S&P500 gained  .03 percent for its third positive day. Only four other sessions share this combination of -1/+4/+3 in the entire history of the market since 1950. Furthermore, these closes came in the 20^th century, in 1990, 1995, and twice in 1997 – and prices moved higher on each of the following days.

Are today’s changes remarkable or just interesting? The immediate reply says just interesting, because the day’s changes are so minute relative to the size of these indices. The DJIA’s change, for example, amounts to just 13.22 dollars, or a minute .11 percent of its value.

Moreover, this pattern occurred on only four of the 15,590 trading days since 1950.

Yet, if these results are not random, but systematically related to changes in business and economic conditions, we have to research these combinations to ascertain their underlying causes.

 

 

DJIA            -.11 percent

NASDAQ      .31 percent

S&P500         .03 percent

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 12th, 2012 at 12 072012000000Thu, 12 Jan 2012 07:53:54 +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.