Courtesy of Doug Short.
The S&P 500 spent the day wallowing in shallow red ink, but a rally at the close nudged the index into the positive territory for a fractional gain of 0.07%. The week tells a better story, with a gain of 2.04%. Thus far, of the thirteen S&P 500 market days in 2012, eleven have been advances, athough three of them were in the 0.02% to 0.07% range. The index has a year-to-date gain of 4.59%. It is 3.54% below its interim high at the end of April 2011.
From an intermediate perspective, the S&P 500 is 94.4% above the March 2009 closing low and 16.0% 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.