The chase by Frances Horodelski:
The history of weekly runs of positive gains on the S&P 500 isn’t particularly long. Last week, the index completed its seventh week in a row of gains. The last time the index accomplished this feat was early in 2013.
Prior to that, the last time was in 2011, but before that May 2007. As for streaks of eight weeks, Avondale Asset Management’s homework shows that there have only been eight (nice symmetry there) times that has occurred.
The last time this occurred was January 2004 (according to S&P Capital IQ). Longer streaks have been short – six times for 9 weeks, and one each for 10, 12 and 13 weeks (all data back to 1950). So we may be living on borrowed time but, while consecutive weekly streaks do end, they are usually followed more by a pause than a collapse and a series of further runs continue.
For reference, Friday marked the 37th new high this year for the S&P 500.
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