Today, 950 trading days since the March 2009 bottom, the S&P500 closed at 211 percent of that low. Thats a bit better than the DJIAs 202 percent recovery yet lags the NASDAQ pace of 237 percent. Yet these strengths could spell bad news for the future: how much further can this recovery go?
Quite a bit, say the statistics, if considered from a more dynamic viewpoint, as revealed by todays diagram. It compares the current S&P500 price line with that of the 2003/2007 trough to peak history. Just in terms of elapsed days, with the life of that previous bull market lasting 1,154 trading days, this expansion has more than 200 calendar days
Further, with the daily paths of the previous and current expansions near parallel so far, there remains ample appreciation ahead.
Dampening these positive views, however, is the strong pace of this expansion compared to the 2007 result. Today, the S&P500, 950 days from its 2009 low, closed at 1,430; in 2006, at the same 950 days after the previous 2003 low, the S&P500 reached 1,413. Thus its a little ahead, at 101 percent of that recovery rate.
But the DJIA and the NASDAQ have far stronger regains, running at 108 percent and 124 percent of where they stood, 950 days into the 2003/2007 expansion. Thus, its not unreasonable to hesitate to signing on to a bright future of further advances.
DJIA .76 percent
NASDAQ 1.32 percent
S&P500 1.19 percent