Gains came to just about equal the losses of the day before, thus the major averages remained almost unchanged. Similarly, in the past, prices on the following day -that is tomorrow- had an almost equal number of gains and losses.
With little to be said about this pattern, we continue with our analysis of differences and similarities of this and past bull markets.
Today’s diagram shows the daily changes of the S&P500, from the 950th day of expansion to the last day of expansion. It reveals two significant differences between the current bull market and the previous two expansions.
1. Clearly daily fluctuations are far smaller in this expansion than in both the earlier ones,
2. The standard deviation, which summarizes the daily volatility, in the current market is less than half that of the 2000, is less than half of this expansion,
3. The strength of this bull market -as measured by the median of daily S&P500 changes- is nearly double that of the two earlier ones,
4. The profiles of the 2000 and 2007 market reveal increasing daily variability as they reach their tops.
DJIA .62 percent
NASDAQ .56 percent
S&P500 .33 percent
