March 27, 2012 Prices Back Off
Losses characterized todays trading, but with these markdowns far smaller than yesterdays gains, the market maintained its positive stance. We direct your attention to the distinctive nature of todays pattern a loss following two gains.
The market has posted 80 such closes in this century; prices on the following day moved higher 46 times and fell on 34 other days. However, rather than belonging to periods of rising or falling prices, they cluster in the years 2003 to 2009; the oddity, of course, is that prices rallied between 2003 and 2007, and then fell from 2007 to 2009.
They represent 4.5 percent of all 2007/2009 trading days, and 3.6 percent of the 2003/2007 expansion.
In contrast, they account for just 1.9 percent of all days during the 2000/2003 decline, and 1.3 percent of the closes since the beginning of 2009.
So far, we have not found any dimension or feature useful to project the direction of future price changes.
DJIA -.33 percent
NASDAQ -.07 percent
S&P500 -.28 percent