Stock Market Down but Post a Great January

By: PhilStockWorld

Courtesy of Doug Short. The S&P 500 popped at the open, but then fell to a midday low, off about half a percent, before making a steady comeback. The closing hour played touch-and-go with break even, with the finally tally being a fractional loss of 0.05% for the day. That’s the fourth consecutive finish in the red. But the month of January saw a gain of 4.36%. To put that into context, that’s the 11th best January since the inception of the S&P 500, in March 1957. The index is 3.76% below its interim high at the end of April 2011.

From an intermediate perspective, the S&P 500 is 94.0% above the March 2009 closing low and 16.1% 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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