Courtesy of Doug Short.
After a one-day pause, the S&P 500 returned to rally mode. The index opened at its 0.20% intraday low, vaulted upward and then drifted to its 1.81% mid-afternoon high. It closed ninety minutes later with a trimmed gain of 1.23%. The popular financial press touted strong pre-market earnings (most notably from Caterpillar and 3M) as the rally trigger and blamed the afternoon fade on renewed Ebola worries (a doctor being tested in NY).
Looking ahead … will Amazon’s post-close earnings disappointment trigger a market struggle at tomorrow’s open? Stay tuned!
The yield on the 10-year Note closed at 2.29%, up 4 bps from yesterday’s close. The weekly average for the 30-year fixed mortgage was announced today at 3.92%, the lowest rate since early June of last year.
Here is a 15-minute chart of the past five sessions.
Volume on today’s advance was relatively unremarkable — slightly lower than on yesterday’s advance.
A Perspective on Drawdowns
How close were we to an “official” correction, generally defined as a 10% drawdown from a high (based on daily closes)? The chart below incorporates a percent-off-high calculation to illustrate the drawdowns greater than 5% since the trough in 2009.
For a longer-term perspective, here is a pair of charts based on daily closes starting with the all-time high prior to the Great Recession.
