Friday, March 10, 2006

Small Cap Stocks: Five-Day Weakness and What Comes Next

It's been a rough week for the small caps, as the Russell 2000 ETF (IWM) is down over 3% on a five-day basis. I went back to March, 2003 (N = 757) and looked for all occasions where the Russell was down comparably and what has happened next.

In all, I found 58 occasions in which IWM was down 3% or more in a five-day period. Five days later, the S&P 500 (SPY) was up by an average .72% (36 up, 22 down) and IWM was up by an average (1.13%) 35 up, 23 down. Both are considerably stronger than the average five-day gain for SPY (.30%; 442 up, 315 down) and IWM (.50%; 445 up, 312 down). This will have me looking for upside setups today and Monday.