April 16, 2010 — Deepest Drop since February 4 Stops Positive Run at Six

Prices plunged from the start; they came back later in the afternoon, yet at the close the S&P500 had lost -1.61 percent, the NASDAQ was off -1.37 percent and the DJIA fell 1.13 percent.  Today’s falloff, the worst in 49 trading days, ended the succession of gains that began on April 15.

To put these results in perspective, we have ranked daily decreases by their size. In that array, only 560 closes of the S&P500 experienced losses worse than today’s  -1.61 percent. Similarly, the NASDAQ decline occupies the 887th position, meaning that of its 4,300 negative days, the  -1.37  percent decline has only 886 more substantial than today – and some 3,400 smaller.

Meanwhile the DJIA suffered the least damage. Its  -1.13 percent change, being the softest of the three, is reflected by its place of only the 1,155th largest of 7,185 negative sessions since 1950.

The outlook for the next day, based on the history of today’s pattern, fails to yield a strong turnaround.  Whereas the NASDAQ’s record shows an even number of gains and losses, the S&P500 has 7 losses and only 5 recoveries, and the DJIA’s ratio is 8 losses to 4 increases.

Note that in evaluating the MarketViewUS projection for today, it failed to provide even a hint of its extent. Moreover, the existing data were unable to point unambiguously even to the market’s direction, with the DJIA’s -7/+4 record, the +6/6 S&P500 history and the NASDAQ’s past of 9 advances
and 3 declines.
DJIA              -1.13 percent
NASDAQ      -1.37 percent 
S&P500        -1.61 percent

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.