Courtesy of Doug Short.
The S&P 500 reopened today after its two-day Sandy-driven shutdown. The index got off to a strong positive open, as the futures led us to expect. But it reached its intraday high, up 0.48%, only twenty minutes into the trading day. The index then went into selloff mode to its lunch-hour intraday low. It then shifted directions to move into the green in the final hour. But last minute selling trimmed the rally to a 0.02% — essentially a flat finish, although a gain in the historical market ledger. For the month of October, the index fell 1.98%.
Here is a 5-minute chart of today’s action and the mini-drama at the close.
And here is an hourly chart of October.
The index is now up 12.29% for 2012. From a longer-term perspective, the S&P 500 is 108.7% above the March 2009 closing low and 9.8% below the nominal all-time high of October 2007.
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.
