Courtesy of Doug Short.
The S&P 500 spent another day struggling for gains in the morning and selling off in a couple of waves during the afternoon. The index closed the day with a loss of 0.43%, but for the month of July, the index gained 1.26%.
The S&P 500 is now up 9.68% for 2012, which is 2.80% off the interim closing high of April 2nd.
From an intermediate perspective, the S&P 500 is 103.9% above the March 2009 closing low and 11.9% below the nominal all-time high of October 2007.
Here is a snapshot of today’s struggle.
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.
