Investor Resources
What Nasdaq’s Winning Streak Tells Us
- July 24, 2009
All winning streaks eventually come to an end, and today was that day for the Nasdaq.
After posting gains for 12 straight days, its longest streak since 1992, the Nasdaq Composite closed down 0.39 percent.
Before today, the Nasdaq had gained 13 percent since July 7 to reach its high for the year. Over the same period, the Dow and the S&P 500 each rose 11 percent.
If the Nasdaq’s winning streak ends today, what does it mean going forward?
The statistics-minded folks at Bespoke Investment Group have run some numbers and come up with some interesting observations.
They looked at all 20 of the Nasdaq’s winning streaks of at least 11 days going back to 1971 (the longest was 19 straight in August 1979), and then at the weeks that followed.
For the 19 previous instances, one week after the streak ended, the index posted additional gains 14 times. The average post-streak gain was 0.65 percent.
Going out farther in time also yields positive results. Three months after the streak, the Nasdaq was up 13 of the 19 occasions, and the average gain was nearly 3 percent.
In the words of Bespoke, “it appears that once the ‘animal spirits’ are out of the barn, it’s hard to get them back in again.”
Bespoke also crunched some Nasdaq numbers relating to trading volume in companies that were up for the day. They found that for the 10 trading days ending this past Wednesday, the “upside volume” represented about 72 percent of the total volume.
Then they went back and looked at the three previous instances when the 10-day average upside volume was at least 67 percent (two-thirds) of total volume. In all three cases, the Nasdaq was up three months later by an average of 9.7 percent.
The Nasdaq Composite Index is a capitalization-weighted index of all Nasdaq National Market and SmallCap stocks. The S&P 500 Stock Index is a widely recognized capitalization-weighted index of 500 common stock prices in U.S. companies. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is a price-weighted average of 30 blue chip stocks that are generally leaders in their industry. None of U.S. Global Investors family of funds held any of the securities mentioned in this article as of 6/30/09. 09-504
Net Asset Value
as of 09/02/2010
- Global Resources Fund
PSPFX $8.72 +0.08 - Gold and Precious Metals Fund
USERX $17.25 +0.18 - World Precious Minerals Fund
UNWPX $19.21 +0.13 - China Region Fund
USCOX $8.50 No Change - Eastern European Fund
EUROX $9.05 +0.03 - Global Emerging Markets Fund
GEMFX $8.15 +0.01 - Global MegaTrends Fund
MEGAX $7.67 +0.03 - All American Equity Fund
GBTFX $19.86 +0.15 - Holmes Growth Fund
ACBGX $15.79 +0.19 - Tax Free Fund
USUTX $12.61 No Change - Near-Term Tax Free Fund
NEARX $2.27 No Change - U.S. Government Securities Savings Fund
UGSXX $1.00 No Change - U.S. Treasury Securities Cash Fund
USTXX $1.00 No Change


