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Thursday marks the 100th trading day since the stock market pandemic on March 23 – and by one measure the subsequent rebound is the strongest in nearly 90 years.
The S&P 500 SPX,
traded slightly lower on Thursday, leaving it more than 50% above its March 23 close of 2,237.40. That puts the U.S. benchmark benchmark on track for its biggest 100-day rise since the period ended August 18, 1933, according to Dow Jones Market Data. It is also not far from revisiting its full-time full-time close of 3,386.15, set for Feb. 19. – a level that traded briefly above in the session on Wednesday and again on Thursday before trimming forward.
To read: Why the S&P 500 is knocking on the door of its first record close in 6 months
Bespoke Investment Group on Wednesday illustrated the historical scale of handball in the tweet below:
Is that favorable? Finally, the world was in the midst of the Great Depression in the 1930s – a notoriously ugly period for stocks (though perhaps not as horrible as popular memories).
However, both the current rally and the rebound of 1933 follow historically steep selloffs that accompanied worldwide cataclysms. Today’s handball comes amid the global public health crisis caused by the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, which has infected more than 20 million people worldwide and resulted in more than 750,000 deaths, including more than 160,000 U.S. deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
The S&P 500 recorded a record high of 3,386.15 on February 19, then fell 33.9% to 2,237.40 after its March 23, tumbling as lockdowns in response to the pandemic set the US and much of the world economy on iis. In that stretch, the drop of the S&P 500 from a record to a bear mark – defined as a fall of 20% from a recent peak – was the fastest in history.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA,
which peaked on February 12, achieved the same historic achievement on its way to a bear market. Similarly, it is more than 50% up from the low of March 23 of 18,591.93, and also set it on course for its strongest gain of 100 days since August 1933.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite COMP,
in the meantime, more than 60% is up from its low of March 23 low of 6,860.67, which would mark its strongest 100 trading days ahead since the period ending March 27, 2000, which is the high of ‘ contains the technical bubble. In fact, according to Dow Jones Market Data, the top 100 trading days on record were the 100 days that ended on March 10, 2000, when the index gained 87.74%.
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