Large gains plus the second advance in a row awakened a market that had cobbled just minor changes in recent days. With the NASDAQs plus 2.21 percent leading the way, the S&P500 added 1.99 percent and the DJIA gained 1.65 percent. Not many sessions performed this well; indeed, only 195 of the 15,000 trading days since 1950 achieved better gains.
That this happened while the market closed higher for the second day in a row, yields an even rarer tally: there are just 30 such closes since 1950, with 19 in this century.
However, our diagram identifying these days also reveals 12 happening during bear markets! Yet all of the four since the 2009 bottom moved higher on the following day.
Further, even the bear market incidents show an optimistic outlook, with almost all clustering just before prices began the long recoveries of 2003 and 2009.
DJIA 1.65 percent
NASDAQ 2.21 percent
S&P500 1.99 percent
