On Columbus Day the DJIA fell after Friday’s increase while the NASDAQ and the S&P500 fell for the second straight day, resulting in a pattern seen just 16 other days in this century. The diagram marking these shows three occurring during the 2000/2003 decline and that the other 13 happened while prices were trending higher.
Today’s market continues the recent flock of uneven closes. So far this year, there have been only 48 closes on which the DJIA, the NASDAQ and the S&P500 had identical up and down counts. In 2011, they totaled 108. Further, they came to 161 during the 2003 recovery year; and after the last bottom in 2009, there were 140 days on which these three averages posted identical up or down patterns.
While price trends and pattern counts are not completely paired, the continuation of this divergent pattern does not promise further gains.
On the following day, in the past, this pattern resulted in six increases and eight declines.
DJIA -.19 percent
NASDAQ -.76 percent
S&P500 -.35 percent
