(By AMBROSE OMORDION) The table above shows the correlation between the market performance on the first trading day of the year with the year-end closing figure. Going by the data, the number of years that opened negative and closed in the red are more, as the year 2008 holds the record of the market’s worst performance (NSE ASI down 45.77%) after gaining 1.02% at the end of its first trading day; 2011 gained 1.34% on the first day, but lost 16.31% by year-end. Year 2010 opened positive and closed 18.93% up; just as 2013 with 1.5% and 47.2% on the first and year-end.
In the nine years review period (2008-2016), the first trading days of four years- 2009 and in the last three years that closed in the red.
Again, the year 2017 had just opened on a negative note. The question then becomes, will this year end bearish again going by the analogy above, or be another exceptional year like it happened in 2012? Time would tell.