July 28, 2008
As noted earlier, the recent pattern of closes often alternates between losses and gains. Todays pasting follows Fridays up tick, which came after Thursdays decline . . .
Losses as deep as todays, after an increase the day before, are relatively rare for the DJIA and the S&P500. The former has only four such days since January 2000; all of these came either between 2000 and 2003, or in 2007 and 2008.
The S&P500 has eight such days, all of which are in the downswing of 2000-2003.
But the NASDAQ record is different: this index has 104 days with losses in the -2.0 to -2.2 percent. Half of these occurred during the dot com decline, between 2000 and 2002.
The history, of changes on the following day, is not significant in either direction; while the S&P500 closed higher twice as often as it declined, the other two indices have an equal number of next day losses and gains.
DJIA -2.11 percent
NASDAQ . -2.00. percent
S&P500 -.1.84 percent