While the DJIAs fourth advanced for the fourth day in a row, the NASDAQ failed to follow, closing lower after three up days; meanwhile the S&P500 declined for the second straight session. This pattern occurred just one other time -on April 15, 1993- in the last 60 plus years. We report this fact, but as so often in recent months, unusual combinations fail to provide reliable projections.
Profiling todays DJIA gain with NASDAQs and the S&P500 losses, yields a history of 139 such days in this century. Whereas 44 of these came during the 2000/2003 decline there were just six in the 2007/2009 drop. Again, the disparity -5.9 percent frequency in the first bear market and 1.7 percent in the second- leaves no room for conjecture.
Similarly, the two price expansions show different ratios, with 5.9 percent of the days since the 2009 bottom and just 2.4 percent in the prior 2003/2007 bull market.
Yet we share one optimistic feature: prices moved higher on the majority of next days, in good as well as bad times. The positive ratio was 53 percent between 2000 and 2007. It rose to 67 percent between 2007 and 2009. It declined a bit, to 60 percent, since March 2009.
But beware of the enormous range of past price changes on the following day. The S&P500 deepest loss was -3.7 percent but that was dwarfed by the NASDAQs drop of -12.7 percent.
DJIA .14 percent
NASDAQ -.26 percent
S&P500 -.09 percent