Following three declines in a row, prices have now oscillated up and down for the last four trading days – a pattern occurring more often when prices are heading down. Though definitely a bear market event, it is rare even then, accounting for less than three percent of the days of the last two declines. Further, just 22 closes, of the more than 3,400 previous expansion days show this combination, and, as today’s diagram shows, none took place during the 2000/2003 bull market.
Yet it is disquieting to see their preponderance at the last market top, in October 2007.
Nevertheless, prices did not decline after the last eleven repeats of the current expansion, though a substantial correction did occur once, in 2011.
Still the fact that these days cluster close together, and occur in bunches, deserves attention. There are four in fourteen days in November 2007; these indeed followed three earlier episodes in July. With similar knots of recent repeats seen all over these years, anticipating further daily fluctuations is in order.
DJIA -.94 percent
NASDAQ -.47 percent
S&P500 -.65 percent
