For the first time since the S&P 500 peaked in mid-February, there’s a chance that we will get by with a positive week. The S&P 500 heads into the last trading day of the week with a gain of 0.42%, but futures are lower, so it’s hardly a done deal. The Nasdaq has also been down for the last four weeks, but unless it rallies 0.35% today (it’s on pace to open 0.4% lower), the streak will extend to a fifth week. If there’s any silver lining, the Nasdaq’s streak of four weeks in a row of 2%+ declines looks likely to end. The Russell 2000 also came into this week riding a streak of four straight weekly declines of at least 1%, but heading into the day, it was up over 1% on the week, so barring a lousy Friday (anything is possible these days), that streak is likely to end.

The tone overnight in Asia has been negative. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index dropped over 2% for the second day in a row, capping off the worst two-day decline for that index since October.  Japan was down fractionally, and Chinese stocks fell over 1%. European stocks are also closing the week on a down note as the STOXX 600 trades down 0.68%, even as it still hangs on to gains for the week. Travel stocks in Europe are leading the declines today as a fire near Heathrow Airport has shut down all air traffic for the rest of the day. The German upper house of Parliament also passed the country’s 500-billion euro spending package for defense and infrastructure, but that was widely expected.

Here in the US, there’s nothing on the economic calendar, so it would make sense to expect a quiet day, especially with the NCAA tournament this afternoon, but you never know when you know who will decide if they have something to say.

Looking at all the red candles in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) chart shows that the market has primarily only been seeing problems lately. In looking at the ETF’s recent intraday performance, we came across a fascinating trend (at least to us it was). On a trailing four-week basis (20 trading days), SPY closed below its opening price 14 times. Over the last 20 years, that high frequency of down days in four weeks has been uncommon, and there has only been one other period (January 2008) when there was a higher frequency of down days.

Since 2005, there have been 17 periods when SPY was down from the open to close 14 times in 20 days, so it occurs an average of about once every 14 months. What’s unique about the last year is that this is the fourth different period in the last year that the rolling 20-day total of declines from the open to close reached 14.  Since 2005, there’s never been a one-year period with four separate periods. The only other period with even three was back in 2005. We’re living in unique times!

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