Department of unknown statistics
The WSJ has a story called “Stocks Cap Wild Year With a Slip” but here perhaps is the real news in the story:
major indexes ended the year in the black despite months of credit-market turmoil. The Dow rose 6.4%, the Nasdaq advanced 9.8% and the S&P 500 climbed 3.5%.
“The Dow rose 6.4%, the Nasdaq advanced 9.8% and the S&P 500 climbed 3.5%.” We concede that these results appear to be a little below the average stock gains of about 8% per year since 1802, but all in all, not a bad year, all things considered.
We can’t help but wonder if (as a commenter noted) one reason that newspapers often emphasize the doom and gloom in the economy is that newspapers themselves have been in a 20 year long economic recession, with unemployment or pay cuts a looming threat in many of the newsrooms across the land.
January 1st, 2008 at 5:04 pm
The behavior of the S&P500 –never mind the NASDAQ–relative to its post-Carter trend leaves considerable room for interpretation.
More to the point, looking forward, is that corporate insiders continue to buy like drunken sailors.
January 2nd, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Speaking of the aforementioned room for interpretation, the market was down sharply on the year’s first trading day. The S&P 500 closed at 1447. When George W. Bush was inaugurated on January 20, 2001, the index stood at 1343–separated from today’s close by 7 or 8%. Dollar-denominated close, not to put too fine a point on it…
Accordingly, even without a recession or other negative events, there’s an appreciable chance that on Election Day and Inauguration Day the market will have meandered below where it stood when Bush took over eight years earlier. Surely electoral strategists are well aware of this possibility.
Still, I’m sticking with the insider-buying indicator. Uneasily.