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With the S&P500 down after yesterday’s advance, while the DJIA closed higher for the second straight day and the NASDAQ down for the third consecutive session, we have a combination seen just two other times since 1996. One of these happened just 20 days after the market turned down in March 2000. The other close was in the middle of the 2007/2009 contraction.

Our diagram includes the four additional instances of this pattern before 1996. It reveals that these, as well as the ‘since 1996’ events, did not foreshadow a major price change, nor begin or end, a bear or bull market.

Yet on the following day in April 2000, the S&P500 advanced 3.33 percent; in June 2008, the S&P500 dropped -1.69 percent. The NASDAQ changes were even larger: plus 6.57 percent in 2000 and minus 2.24 percent in 2008.

DJIA .20 percent
NASDAQ -.40 percent
S&P500 -.14 percent

Prices remain in a narrow band as the DJIA and the S&P500 moved up while the NASDAQ declined, falling for the second day in a row. Meanwhile prices continue to advance, scoring their 1,298th day of expansion since the March 2009 bottom.

Today’s pattern has occurred more frequently when prices were trending up in the early years of this century. More recently, however, that has changed; since 2007, this combination is evident more often when prices are on the decline.

Yet, as the diagram shows, prices moved higher on the following day more often during bull markets: in fact, advances on the next day outnumber declines two to one. In bear markets, however, declines outnumber gains on subsequent days.

We observe this pattern often at lower turning points, though it preceded the March 2000 high three times – 56, 22 and 18 days before prices turned down.

DJIA .72 percent
NASDAQ -.32 percent
S&P500 .56 percent

Prices moved up today with the DJIA and the S&P500 recovering from their two losing days at the end of last week. These closes, combined with the NASDAQ’s gain after its loss on Friday, yield a rarely seen pattern, but one equally common in bull and bear markets. Our diagram shows these closes with a concentration around the 2007 market peak, we note that three such closes happened just four days before the top, on the very day that prices scored their highest mark ever in October 2007, and also six days thereafter.

The S&P500 continues its fluctuation in the narrow range of 1,850-1,880 since March. Prices escaped this boundary just twice: the first time to establish a new high in April and also in their immediate decline thereafter.

On the following day in the past, prices moved higher just about as often as they declined; moreover this equality existed whether the trend of prices was up or down.

DJIA .11 percent
NASDAQ .34 percent
S&P500 .19 percent

With the NASDAQ scoring its third successive gain and the DJIA and the S&P500 losing ground for the first time after three straight up-days, we see a somewhat common pattern. The last occurrences were twice last November, one in September and one in June 2013.

These are more common in bull markets than when prices are heading down. Yet their frequency in the past three expansions is moderate, ranging only between .96 and 1.51 percent. The diagram shows many massed near turning points. Indeed one is at the top of the market on October 9, 2007.

Similarly, two happened 36 days and 9 days before prices turned down in March 2000.

This history leaves the outlook for tomorrow undefined: in the past gains on the following days were only a bit more frequent than declines.

DJIA -.13 percent
NASDAQ .31 percent
S&P500 -.01 percent