While the world suddenly finds itself with a glut of oil and other related commodites, one thing that is certainly in short supply so far this year is an up day in the market. So far this year, the Dow has finished the day higher on 36.7% of the 32 trading days (through Wednesday). We all know that it has been a bad year, but this is down right depressing! In the table below, we highlight the 15 prior years where the Dow started off the year with 40% or less of the first 32 trading days finishing higher. You you have to go all the way back to 1984 to find a year that started off with an even greater frequency of down days.
As shown below, the rest of the year is hardly anyhting to get excited about. While the last three occurrences have been positive, the overall average return for the rest of the year is a decline of 2.1%.
well, at this point I would say that decline above -10 % will be a ver positive event !
Posted by: Comrade de Chaos | February 20, 2009 at 10:20 AM