Why is the Stock Market the Calmest it’s Been in Over 50 Years?

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Despite the volatility in the market for bitcoin, 2017 is turning out to be a calm year for stocks. In fact, it’s the calmest year for stocks since 1964 when measured by the average daily move of the S&P 500 index. Ben Eisen explains at The Wall Street Journal:

The S&P 500′s average daily up-or-down move so far this year is 0.3%, according to The Wall Street Journal’s Market Data Group. That’s just over half the comparable move last year and less than a fifth of the average daily move in 2008. If it finishes the year this way, it would be the smallest absolute average daily move since 1964, and the second smallest on record.

That hasn’t stopped stocks from notching significant gains since the end of 2016. The S&P 500′s 19% rise so far this year is pacing for its biggest annual rise since 2013. That’s an outcome few would have expected at the start of 2017, when a poll of Wall Street analysts by Birinyi Associates showed they expected gains of just 6.3% on average.

And yet, there have been few major moves in either direction. There have been just eight 1% moves in 2017, which, if it stays that way, would be the fewest since 1965. There have been zero 2% up-or-down moves, which would be the first year since 2005 that’s happened. In the S&P 500′s nine decades, it’s only had 10 years without a 2% move.

Read more here.