Stock Market Selloff Resumes

By: PhilStockWorld

The pre-market release of an unexpectedly good jobless claims report was ignored by today’s market. The three-day selloff in the S&P 500 that began last Thursday resumed after a two-day reprieve. The index fell steadily through the day with a failed attempt to reverse directions in the early afternoon and again in the closing hour. The -2.09% final tally was fractionally off the -2.21% intraday low shortly after 3 PM. This was the second worst decline of the year — the worst being the -2.28% of February 3rd. Once again the Tech Sector posted the biggest declines, with the Nasdaq Composite down 3.10%, its biggest drop since November 2011.

The yield on the 10-year note finished at 2.65%, down 6 bps from yesterday’s close. The interim high yield was 3.04% at the end of 2013.

Here is a snapshot of the past five sessions, which shows the downtrend from the record intraday high last Friday, the subsequent two-day advance and today’s renewed selloff.

On the daily chart we see that today’s decline came on increased volume. The index is now below its 50-day moving average.

The S&P 500 is now down 0.83% for 2014.

Here is a longer perspective, starting with the all-time high prior to the Great Recession.

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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