Both the NASDAQ and the S&P500 recovered more than their day before declines. While the DJIA advanced, it failed to return to its previous level.
We note today’s wide performance disparity in these three averages: the S&P500’s gain is twelve times that of the DJIA. This magnitude though is far from unusual and, it can be argued, that large differences indicate higher prices are ahead.
During the last bear market, the largest daily S&P500 to DJIA price change ratio came to 34; it was 24 during the 2000/2003 decline.
In sharp contrast, this number has been over 500 in the current expansion; while much smaller, at just 77 in the 2003/2007 expansion and 261 between 1995 and 2000, these ratios are several times larger than the bear market numbers.
Yet despite these wide disparities, the median S&P500/DJIA daily price change ratio is not very different from one, meaning that most of the time the performance of these indices is near identical.
Nevertheless, the median has grown, rising from 1.01 in the 1995/2000 expansion to 1.11 since the last bottom in March 2009.
Bottom line, though, the huge difference between the S&P500 and DJIA gains is consistent with changes that have occurred in the past when prices were moving higher.
DJIA .07 percent
NASDAQ 1.25 percent
S&P500 .88 percent