Prices slipped slightly for the NASDAQ and the S&P500 while the DJIA edged higher. This combination occurred just 191 times in the 4,349 trading days of the last four price cycles. Though just 50 happened during the last two declines, their distribution over each up and down cycle is too diverse to allow identification with periods of up and down price changes.
Their incidence is identical at 5.9 percent of all trading days, for example, in both the 2003/2007 decline as in the current expansion. Further, the following day shows just about as many gains as losses over all the price cycles.
Continuing our comparison of recent bull markets, we focus on the 2003/2007 expansion. While it lasted for 1,154 trading days, it had a severe reversal and recovery before its end. The red vertical line in our diagram, at day 1,094, identifies this happening.
The black vertical line shows today’s close, 1,036 days into the current expansion. That means we have almost three months to go before reaching that decline in elapsed time
Yet, with the steepness of the green line showing that recent gains have accelerated far more rapidly than during the earlier cycle, we might expect the reaction day to occur sooner.
DJIA .08 percent
NASDAQ -.33 percent
S&P500 -.18 percent
