April 10, 2008
While the NASDAQ advanced 1.27 percent today, closing with a gain for the first time this week, it, nevertheless, still has not recovered to the level reached on the first of this month.
Todays positive close comes after three successive negative sessions. This is the fifth time this year, that the NASDAQ has followed this pattern of daily change one up day/following three declines. Since January 2000, there have been 63 other cases, with the identical pattern of daily change; their median increase is 1.27 percent, the same as todays performance.
The advances of the DJIA and the S&P500 come after two successive negative closes. The record shows that there have been about 135 other trading days with the same pattern. The median of these for the S&P500 is .77 percent, and .63 percent for the DJIA, substantially more than their gains today.
Looking at the past, for the changes on the day following this pattern, these two indices have as many down days as up days after this regime of a higher close/after two days of decline.
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DJIA .44 percent
NASDAQ 1.27 percent
S&P500 .45 percent