USMarketView

February 22, 2008

The DJIA and the S&P500, though they closed higher by less than .25 percent than a week ago, managed to score their fourth Friday to Friday advance this year. But the -.79 percent decline of the NASDAQ, means that this index has been able to move to higher valuation in only two of the eight Fridays so far in 2008.

These results are not out of the ordinary: the DJIA has the best history of weekly advances in January and February, but it achieved only a 54 percent ratio of positive weekly changes, since January 2000.

The S&P500 did not do as well; having only a 50/50 record of positive/negative Friday to Friday closes. The NASDAQ comes in last, with just 41 percent of its weekly closes higher than the week before.

The story on the median value of these weekly changes reveals that the DJIA had a positive median in merely four of the nine years, starting in 2000. That is, the median weekly change in the first two months of the year shows an advance less than 50 percent of the time. The NASDAQ and S&P500 did not score as well, their median was positive in only three of those nine years.

The weekly performance in the first two months of the year, it seems, does not yield a meaningful insight into the performance of these indices for the rest of the year.

DJIA .78 percent
NASDAQ .16 percent
S&P500 .79 percent

This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 12 092008000000Fri, 22 Feb 2008 21:47:52 +0000 and is filed under Market Report. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.