An Appraisal: Speedy Turnaround After Boesky News Shows Strength
If you could count on Thursday's and Friday's stock market performance in the wake of the Ivan Boesky scandal, then bring on another one.</br></br>Tuesday's stock market rout, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 43.31 points in response to the spreading Boesky insider trading scandal, actually "was equivalent to an act of God," says market technician Ralph Bloch.</br></br>"It was the kind of totally unanticipated event that sparks a market panic and creates precisely the conditions where a market technician can go to work," says Mr. Bloch, chief market analyst at Raymond James Associates, St. Petersburg, Fla.</br></br>At Tuesday's close, there were 1,107 more New York Stock Exchange issues showing price declines for the day than price gains. And the market's "trend index" at the close stood at 3.60, "a pretty spooky figure," says Mr. Bloch.</br></br>The trend index is a continuously updated ratio of the volume of stocks last trading at a price below the immediate previous trade to the volume of stocks last trading above the immediately previous trade price.