The S&P500 closed with a new, all time high of 1706.83, adding 1.25 percent today. That up-beat news, though, comes with a negative connotation. Daily gains this large and larger occur more often in bear markets than when prices are heading up.
Today’s diagram distributes all daily S&P500 closes above 1.25 percent over all recent bear and bull markets. The heights of the graph’s columns reflect these frequencies as a percent of all trading days. They account for 15 and 19 percent of the two bear markets. The bull market proportions are 12, 6, and 13 percent for the expansions of 1996/2000, 2003/2007, and the present growth that began in March 2009.
As for tomorrow, the record shows prices continuing higher just about half the time in rising as well as falling markets. Yet the median percent change is near .80 percent in bear markets, but declines to about .50 percent when prices are trending higher.
DJIA .83 percent
NASDAQ 1.36 percent
S&P500 1.25 percent