Courtesy of Doug Short.
The S&P 500 closed the day with a modest gain of 0.37%, breaking a three-day losing streak. But the financial media was quick to point out that this is the best quarterly gain in the index (and the Dow) since 1998.
In honor of this achievement, I’ve added a chart below, courtesy of BigCharts.com, to illustrate the quarterly behavior of the S&P 500 since the mid-1990s — hardly a random walk!
The index gained 0.81% for the week and an even 12.00% for the quarter.
From an intermediate perspective, the S&P 500 is 108.2% above the March 2009 closing low and 10.0% 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.
These charts are not intended as a forecast but rather as a way to study the current market in relation to historic market cycles.
