The Post QE Slump Levels Off
Guest post by Doug Short.
Another light-volume day saw the major US index split the difference at the flatline. The Dow closed 0.09% higher and the S&P 500 0.13% lower. The 500, my preferred metric, fell at the open and it its intraday low in the first 15 minutes of trading. The opening price served as resistance at the intraday high about 90 minutes later. The downward trend since the QE3 spike on Friday morning appears to be leveling off, but the absence of volume suggests that the market is still in a wait-and-see mode. So we’ll wait and see what tomorrow brings.
The index is now up 16.04% for 2012. From a longer-term perspective, the S&P 500 is 115.7% above the March 2009 closing low and 6.8% below the nominal all-time high of October 2007.
And here is a 15-minute snapshot of the trend over the past seven sessions, which shows the behavior of the index leading into the QE3 announcement the aftermath to date.
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.