Stock Market Today: January 1st - 5th, 2024

looks like we did according to this chart i posted last night. looks like we broke a streak of 7 straight green SCR's

 

now i'm really curious to see how the full month performance does this month. but still think these early year indicators are just that. doesn't really tell how the markets will do for the full year. not a terribly great indicator but gives some interesting family dinner talk discussions for sure haha.

 

here's the final results of the 7-day santa rally:

the dow actually eeked out a flat gain, but this is typically widely followed using the cash S&P index. down -0.88% during this SCR period. interesting start to the year for sure haha.

 

Top of the afternoon StonkForumers! Happy Thursday to all of you and welcome to the new trading day and a frrrrrrrrrrrresh start. Here is a quick check on those futures as we over 2 hours into the US cash market open.

GLTA on this Thursday, January the 4th, 2024!

 

Morning Lineup - 1/4/24 - Better Jobs Data
Thu, Jan 4, 2024

Isaac Newton was born on this day in 1643, and markets appear to be celebrating his birthday with their rediscovery of gravity after last year’s rally in the final two months of the year. Analysts have also been getting in on the act as there have been as many downgrades of Apple (AAPL) in the first three trading days of the year (3) than there were in the entire fourth quarter of 2023.

Equity futures have been trading with a modestly positive bias this morning which marks a shift from the last two days where declines in Europe have pushed futures in the US lower. This morning’s economic slate includes the ADP Employment report which came in higher than expected at 164K versus forecasts for an increase of 115K. Jobless claims were also just released and on both an initial and continuing basis, the numbers were better than expected.

With a decline of 0.80% yesterday, the S&P 500 posted back-to-back declines of 0.50% or more to start the year for just the fifth time on record. Wasn’t the start of the year supposed to be strong? As we’ve noted in various seasonality analyses, while the S&P 500’s long-term performance in January has been strong, in more recent history that has not been the case. In any event, regarding the back-to-back declines, you have to go back to 2005 to find the last occurrence and the only three others were in 1980, 1991, and 2000.

In the table below we show the performance of the S&P 500 for the rest of January and the rest of the year in each of those four years. For the rest of January, the S&P 500 bounced back big in 1980 and 1991 and saw just modest declines for the rest of the month in 2000 and 2005. For the remainder of the year, performance varied widely as well. In both 1980 and 1991, the S&P 500 posted gains of more than 29% for the rest of the year while in 2000 it fell nearly 6% while in 2005, it rallied 5%.

A sample size of four is admittedly small, and the fact that there was no clear trend of performance going forward doesn’t shed much light on what to expect for the remainder of the year. Not only that, but whereas each of the declines this year were less than 1%, in each of the four other periods, the magnitude of the decline was much larger.

 

Here is a final look at today's market and futures maps, as well as how each sector performed individually at the close on Thursday, January 4th, 2024.

 

Here are today's gappers up & down:

 

haha np! i think you made a great point though @stock1234 that the outcome of the SCR is not a very good indicator for how the full calendar year may finish in the market.

i just found this chart today which pulls in a bit more data going back to at least 1955, which shows that a red SCR hasn't necessarily meant a red calendar year in the market. it's actually been higher more than lower for the full year.

that said, the past 5 red SCR's has seen a pretty steep red full month for january. let's see if this january can buck that trend. Q1 overall has also been kind of mixed after a red SCR.

at the end of the day, a red SCR certainly isn't the end all and be all for the full year for the market for sure.

makes for fun and interesting discussions at family dinner tables though

 

Top of the morning StonkForumers! Happy Friday to all of you and welcome to the final trading day of the week and a frrrrrrrrrrrresh start. Here is a quick check on those futures as we over an hour from the US cash market open.

GLTA on this Friday, January the 5th, 2024!

 

Morning Lineup - 1/5/24 - Streaking
Fri, Jan 5, 2024

If the action in Europe and pre-market futures is any indication, we’re on pace to o-fer the week. That would extend the losing streak for the S&P 500 to five days and the Nasdaq and Russell 2000 to six. Before we get ahead of ourselves, though, there’s still a full day of trading left ahead, and how we end the day will in large part be impacted by the 8:30 release of Non-Farm Payrolls and the 10 AM release of ISM Services.

After closing within 0.30% of its record high last Thursday, the S&P 500 has embarked on what is now a four-day losing streak. We got so close, and yet now those record highs seem so far away (even if we are still within 2% of that record). The fac that the S&P 500 traded at a 52-week high and then proceeded to fall for five straight days doesn’t instill a lot of confidence, and a look at recent history will show you why. Looking at the S&P 500 since the start of 2020, this most recent period is the third time that the S&P 500 closed at a 52-week high that was then followed by at least four straight days of declines. The other two occurrences were on July 31st, right before the S&P 500 began its late summer swoon, and then on 1/3/22, which marked the peak of the post-COVID bull market. Happy Friday!



While the last two occurrences certainly weren’t positive, if we widen our perspective, the declines that followed those two most recent occurrences were more of an exception than the rule. Extending the chart out to 2020 shows that while there was another occurrence right at the pre-COVID peak in February 2020, from late 2020 through 2021, there were multiple occurrences that, in hindsight, are barely noticeable.

 

Here is a final look at today's market and futures maps, as well as how each sector performed individually at the close on Friday, January 5th, 2024.