Stock Market Strong Performance Despite the Congressional Dithering

By: PhilStockWorld

Courtesy of Doug Short. The markets certainly didn’t share the dismal outlook of this morning’s NFIB Small Business Optimism Index, which posted the 10th worst level in its history. The S&P 500 surged at the open and hit its intraday high, up 1.11%, in the late morning. The index showed resilience through the early afternoon until Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid expressed his view that “it’s going to be extremely difficult to get it [an agreed budget plan] done before Christmas.” The index rolled over for about 30 minutes but the regained its poise and closed the day with a 0.65% gain. Today’s intraday high was back in the neighberhood of the November election day intraday high.

Here is a five-minute chart of today’s action.

Here is an hourly chart highlighting the November 6th election day high and today’s intraday high.

The S&P 500 is now up 13.54% for 2012 but 2.59% below the interim closing high of September 14th.

From a longer-term perspective, the index is 111.1% above the March 2009 closing low and 8.8% 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.

- Phil

www.philstockworld.com

Philip R. Davis is a founder of Phil's Stock World (www.philstockworld.com), a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders. Mr. Davis is a serial entrepreneur, having founded software company Accu-Title, a real estate title insurance software solution, and is also the President of the Delphi Consulting Corp., an M&A consulting firm that helps large and small companies obtain funding and close deals. He was also the founder of Accu-Search, a property data corporation that was sold to DataTrace in 2004 and Personality Plus, a precursor to eHarmony.com. Phil was a former editor of a UMass/Amherst humor magazine and it shows in his writing -- which is filled with colorful commentary along with very specific ideas on stock option purchases (Phil rarely holds actual stocks). Visit: Phil's Stock World (www.philstockworld.com)

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