Stock Market Friday Fractionally Down Day, Fractionally Up Week

By: PhilStockWorld

Courtesy of Doug Short. With a somewhat lower than consensus Q4 GDP, the S&P 500 sagged at the open and wallowed in shallow red through most of the day. A modest afternoon rally gave hope of a positive finish, and the index did make it into the green in the final 30 minutes. But a selloff near the close gave Friday a fractional loss of 0.16%. For the week the index gained a meager 0.07%. The index has a year-to-date gain of 4.67%. It is 3.47% below its interim high at the end of April 2011.

From an intermediate perspective, the S&P 500 is 94.6% above the March 2009 closing low and 15.9% below the nominal all-time high of October 2007.

Below are two charts of the index, with and without the 50 and 200-day moving averages.

For a better sense of how these declines figure into a larger historical context, here’s a long-term view of secular bull and bear markets in the S&P Composite since 1871.

For a bit of international flavor, here’s a chart series that includes an overlay of the S&P 500, the Dow Crash of 1929 and Great Depression, and the so-called L-shaped “recovery” of the Nikkei 225. I update these weekly.

These charts are not intended as a forecast but rather as a way to study the current market in relation to historic market cycles.

- Phil

www.philstockworld.com

Philip R. Davis is a founder of Phil's Stock World (www.philstockworld.com), a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders. Mr. Davis is a serial entrepreneur, having founded software company Accu-Title, a real estate title insurance software solution, and is also the President of the Delphi Consulting Corp., an M&A consulting firm that helps large and small companies obtain funding and close deals. He was also the founder of Accu-Search, a property data corporation that was sold to DataTrace in 2004 and Personality Plus, a precursor to eHarmony.com. Phil was a former editor of a UMass/Amherst humor magazine and it shows in his writing -- which is filled with colorful commentary along with very specific ideas on stock option purchases (Phil rarely holds actual stocks). Visit: Phil's Stock World (www.philstockworld.com)

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