By The Numbers
- Wednesday, 18 Apr 2012 2:19 PM ET
We may still be listening to Madonna today – who topped the charts with “Like a Prayer” in 1989 – but time has not stood still for your money.
Larry Busacca | WireImage | Getty ImagesMadonna in 1989Since CNBC first went live 23 years ago back on April 17, 1989, it has paid to be in the stock market.
Back then, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 2,338 as blue chips continued their march toward recovering losses from the 1987 crash. IBM [IBM Loading... ()
] traded at around $28 a share. The S&P 500 was at 302. The Nasdaq finished on that day in 1989 at 418, while Apple stock [AAPL
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] languished at around $10 a share.Oh, how the times have changed.
- Tuesday, 17 Apr 2012 1:47 PM ETBy: Robert Hum
Apple closed Monday with its worst five-day losing streak in more than three years, falling 8.8 percent over that period. The stock also ended down 9.9 percent from its record intraday high of $644 on April 10.
Getty ImagesAlthough the stock has recovered some of its losses Tuesday, where can investors turn if they want to protect themselves from a continued Apple [AAPL Loading... ()
]downturn?Equal-Weight Investing
Equal-weight exchange-traded funds
![[cnbc explains]](http://media.cnbc.com/i/CNBC/Sections/News_And_Analysis/_News/_CNBC_EXPLAINS/_IMAGES/CNBC_explains_icon1.gif)
give the same weight to each holding in the index, rather than assigning weightings based on other fundamentals such as market cap
, stock price and revenue.Apple’s surge over the past months has been a blessing for indexes such as the Nasdaq 100 and the S&P 500 Tech sector — the tech giant has had a large impact on those indexes due to its strong price performance and disproportionate weighting.
- Friday, 13 Apr 2012 2:15 PM ET
U.S. stocks are on track for their second consecutive week of losses, with the S&P 500 and Dow down about 2.3 percent in that period.
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At the current levels, both indices are poised for their worst two-week period since Nov. 25, when they fell 8.3 percent and 7.6 percent, respectively.Within the S&P index, tech might have its first down week this year.
The sector [.GSPT Loading... ()] threatened to drop last week, but ended barely to the upside, up 0.05 percent. With this week’s 1.6 percent decline, the tech sector may snap 14 straight weeks of gains — its longest winning streak on record.Apple [AAPL Loading... ()
], which is up 50 percent in 2012, has not helped the broader sector’s performance this week. The tech giant is down nearly 4 percent in the last 5 sessions, snapping its own 12-week winning streak and posting its worst week since Nov. 11. - Thursday, 12 Apr 2012 4:38 PM ET
Gianluca Fabrizio | Vetta | Getty ImagesParaskevidekatriaphobia is the fear of Friday the 13th, but investors should not be too frightened. Friday the 13th happens at least one to three times every year.
The last triple year was 2009, and the next triple year is 2012. The last Friday 13th in 2012 will be this July.
Historically, Friday the 13th tends to be a relatively calm day for the stock market, with average gains of only 0.2 percent or less.
In four of the last six instances, though, all three major averages finished down for the day. Should investors take this as a bad omen? Below is a look at how stocks traded on this superstitious day. - Wednesday, 11 Apr 2012 4:47 PM ET
Since the Standard & Poor's 500 touched a multi-year high on April 2, the index is down about 3.8 percent. But as Street Signs host Brian Sullivan pointed out on Monday, stocks have had much steeper pullbacks in recent years.
Peter Dazeley | The Images Bank | Getty Images
For instance, the S&P 500 [.SPX Loading... ()] last year dropped 253 points, or 18 percent, from July 8 to October 3. And from April 30, 2010 to July 2, 2010, the S&P 500 fell 155 points, or 13 percent.
By pullback standards, however, the S&P 500’s recent slide —Wednesday’s gains aside— is small in comparison.
“I am more bullish than the market appears,” Alpesh Patel, director of Praefinium Partners, told CNBC.He also pointed out, “Back to back gains in the S&P 500 in the first two months of the year have occurred in 24 of the last 66 years. The average gain during those 24 years was 19.4 percent, with not a single down year.”
- Tuesday, 10 Apr 2012 4:48 PM ETBy: Giovanny Moreano
Stocks broke out of their “euphoric fever” Monday.U.S. stocks closed down for the fifth consecutive trading session Tuesday, with the S&P 500 index posting its worst one-day percent loss this year.
Both the S&P 500 [.SPX Loading... ()] and Dow [.DJI
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] logged their worst 5-day percentage decline since Nov. 25, down about 4 percent in that period.
Cyclical names in the material, energy and industrial sectors had the largest losses. Financial companies, which are still up 15 percent so far this year, are also leading the declines.
The last time the S&P 500 fell for five consecutive trading days was on Aug. 2, when the index marked an 8-day losing streak, down 6.7 percent. - Monday, 9 Apr 2012 2:49 PM ETBy: Kristen Scholer
The Morgan Stanley Healthcare Payors Index [.HMO Loading... ()
Lilli Day | Photodisc | Getty Images] is having its worst day in eight months on news Ohio will not renew contracts to four current Medicaid providers: Molina Healthcare [MOH
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], Centene Corp.[CNC
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], WellCare Health Plans [WCG
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] and Amerigroup Corp. [AGP
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]. Ohio instead selected health plans of Aetna [AET Loading... ()
], UnitedHealth Group [UNH
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], and three private companies — CareSource, Meridian Health Plan, and Paramount Advantage — to run the state’s Medicaid programs effective Jan. 1, 2013.MOH and CNC, two managed-care companies that collect a hefty portion of their revenue from Ohio, are hurting the most Monday, plunging even further after being downgraded to neutral from positive by Susquehanna.
- Monday, 9 Apr 2012 8:52 AM ETBy: Robert Hum
Getty ImagesFacebook's final private market transaction has priced on SecondMarket at $43.50, a record for the private market exchange. That figure values the company at about $109 billion.
At that level, Facebook's market cap would just fall short of Cisco Systems [CSCO Loading... ()], which is the 8th largest company on the Nasdaq 100 and holds a 3.4 percent weighting in the index.
In fact, Facebook would be bigger than each of the following Nasdaq 100 members: Amazon.com, Comcast, News Corp, eBay and Starbucks. - Thursday, 5 Apr 2012 4:53 PM ETBy: Yolaiki Gonzalez
Historically, U.S. stocks tend to trade down on the Monday following a Good Friday, with the NASDAQ Composite having the biggest decline.
Since 1928, the NASDAQ index posted a loss 61 percent of the time, down on average -0.3 percent.
The markets have been closed now for more than 100 years since the last time they opened on Good Friday in 1907. Here is a look at how stocks performed the day after the observance of this religious holiday. - Wednesday, 4 Apr 2012 5:49 PM ETBy: Giovanny Moreano
U.S. stocks closed down for the second consecutive session on Wednesday, pulling back from the strong gains in the past 6 months.
Since the low on Oct. 4, the Nasdaq Composite [COMP Loading... ()] is up 33.5 percent, followed by the S&P 500, with a gain of 30 percent, and the Dow, up 25.7 percent.
On Wednesday, the Dow [.DJI Loading... ()] posted its second triple-digit decline so far this year (March 6 was the first one, when the index fell 203.66 points, or 1.57 percent).
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