Stock Market S&P - A Last-Minute Win

By: PhilStockWorld

Doug Short writes: Pre-market data signaled a weak open, and that’s what we got. The S&P 500 saw some minor selling in the first 15 minutes but bounced back to the opening price within an hour. The index hovered directionless until Chairman Bernanke’s luncheon speech to the New York Economic Club. The index promptly plunged to its intraday low, off 0.71%, at 1:30 PM. But the 500 apparently had a mission to book a third consecutive day of gains. It marched slowly higher, struggled for a bit at the 1,386 level but remained determined. And determination paid off with a closing gain of 0.07% in the last minute of trading, literally.

Here is a five-minute chart of today’s little drama, with the Bernanke time-out highlighted.

Here’s a one-minute chart documenting that last-minute save.

And since Chairman Bernanke was a key player in today’s market action, here’s an updated look at the index since his announcement of QE3 … and, as an afterthought, I’ve highlighted Election Day.

The S&P 500 is now up 10.35% for 2012 but 5.32% below the interim closing high of September 14th.

From a longer-term perspective, the index is 105.1% above the March 2009 closing low and 11.3% below the nominal all-time high of October 2007.

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.

- 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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