Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of May 20, 2020

Article Excerpt

The stock market has gone through a series of phases since it began this year’s downturn in the second half of February. The drop started out with an abrupt month-long plunge. This attracted a lot of comment on the similarity of the 2020 dive to past periods of extreme market weakness. In three weeks or so, the drop passed the “traditional bear market threshold” of a 20% drop from the peak—traditional, that is, from the point of view of technical analysts, who try to predict market moves based on price-change patterns and other trading data. This supposed milestone spurred still more media interest and comment. Observers began making predictions about what would happen next. No real consensus emerged about the market outlook during that month-long plunge. However, a large minority of commenters seemed to converge around the idea that this was the first “down leg” in a longer, deeper downturn. This analysis suggests that investors should brace for a second down leg,…