S&P 500 Snapshot: Erasing Yesterday's Gain

Yesterday, the first market day of the proverbial "sell in May" strategy, saw a 0.78% gain, but the second day of May trading erased the gain with a 0.87% loss. Today was light on economic news, with the big economic event of the week coming on Friday with the release of the April employment report. The popular financial press pointed to larger than expected contraction in China's Caixin Manufacturing PMI, a diffusion index that has contracted for the past 21 months. The S&P 500 plunged at the open and sold off to its late morning -1.28% intraday low. It recovered nearly half its loss in the afternoon, but a second wave of selling led to its -0.87% closing number.

The yield on the 10-year note closed at 1.81%, down seven basis points from the previous.

Here is a snapshot of past five sessions in the S&P 500.

Here is a daily chart of the index. Volume was unremarkable but fractionally higher on today's selling than yesterday's first May market day advance.

A Perspective on Drawdowns

Here's a snapshot of selloffs since the 2009 trough.

Here is a more conventional log-scale chart with drawdowns highlighted.

Here is a linear scale version of the same chart with the 50- and 200-day moving averages.

A Perspective on Volatility

For a sense of the correlation between the closing price and intraday volatility, the chart below overlays the S&P 500 since 2007 with the intraday price range. We've also included a 20-day moving average to help identify trends in volatility.