2004 Stock Market Returns

The broad stock market indices closed up in 2004 due to the late year rally in prices. The Russell 2000, which includes small and mid-size companies, was up 17% and outperformed the three major averages.

2004 Stock Market Returns
Measure	S&P 500	DJIA	Nasdaq	Russell 2000
Annual Return	8.99%	3.15%	8.59%	17.00%
CTM Percent Winners	53.84%	41.96%	45.04%	55.49%

The CTM percent winners tell the story of the internals of the 2004 market. There were 31,626 buy and sell combinations for the 265 trading days in 2004. About one half of the buy and sell combinations were winners. Had it not been for the price rally toward the end of 2004, most of the buy and sell combinations would have lost money.

The CTM percent returns chart of the 31,626 buy and sell combinations for the S&P 500 shows the 17,027 (53.84%) winning buy and sell combinations in green and the 14,599 (46.16%) losers in red. The relative high returns at the end of 2004 resulted from the year-end rising prices

The CTM winner and losers map shows the large green area of winning buy and sell combinations area associated with the rally in prices toward the end of 2004. Before prices started to increase, many of the buy and sell combinations were losers as shown by the large red area of the map.