Maybe you could already tell from tech expert Matthew Ball’s face that it would be a zero round. During the ball on Monday evening on the balcony above the floor of the New York Stock Exchange The final bell ranghe didn’t make a face. No smile, no smirk, just a listless look at the cameras. One could say: Without any movement, Ball could not have ended this trading day more appropriately.
Because on the US market there was a triple zero number late on Monday evening: All three major stock market indices in the United States closed exactly 0.0 percent changed. The S&P 500 popular among investors? 0.0 percent change. The historically important Dow Jones? Plus-minus 0.0 percent. And the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite? Calculated in percent: nothing, nothing, nada.
Part of the whole truth is: the indices changed by a few points, but a percentage change greater than 0.0 percent did not translate into a change, at least rounded to the first decimal place. Even market expert Thomas Altmann from the fund company QC Partners is amazed: “Such an event is extremely rare.”
According to calculations by SZ shows: The fact that nothing happens at the same time up to the first decimal place in all three major US indices has happened on just 14 days since the turn of the millennium – with a total of 5504 trading days on the US stock exchanges during this period. For those who love numbers, this means: in 0.25 percent of all cases, exactly zero point changed in the three most important US stock market indices.
Monday was anything but boring on the US stock exchanges. Boeing shares shot up immediately after trading opened because the aircraft manufacturer was optimistic at the Dubai Air Show. The total value of all tradable shares in the electric car maker Tesla has now fallen below the magic mark of one trillion dollars, which unsettled investors. “But from 5.30 p.m. German time, only sideways were the order of the day,” says equity expert Altmann.
Incidentally, sometimes it even happens that the stock market indices do not change in terms of points. For example, the Dow Jones closed on November 12, 2019 at exactly 27,691.4854488934 points – exactly at the closing level of the previous day. The joint index operator “S&P Dow Jones” calculates ten decimal places every day for the two leading indices, the S&P 500 and Dow Jones.
However, experts do not believe that the triple, percentage zero number is likely to repeat itself quickly on the New York floor. So-called stock market thermometers (“Vix indices”) show the fluctuations investors expect in the coming period. The current value for the next 30 days still indicates quite a calm. “But in the coming year,” says stock exchange expert Altmann, “there should be more course roller coaster.”