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S&P Pressure Gauge Swings Toward Selling, Suggests Pain to Come

S&P Pressure Gauge Swings Toward Selling, Suggests Pain to Come

(Bloomberg) -- While U.S. stocks may have finished higher Monday, the pressure to sell still dominates the market, according to a key technical gauge.

As the S&P 500 posted its worst weekly performance since 2016 last week, the index’s DVAN trend line -- a "divergence analysis" which measures the current buying or selling pressure -- has turned appreciably downward for the first time in two years.

S&P Pressure Gauge Swings Toward Selling, Suggests Pain to Come

The bigger the divergence between the S&P’s price and the trend line, the stronger the negative pressure. A wider gap also signals that there is more volatility and downside to follow.

The last time the index broke this far through the baseline was in January 2016, when it proceeded to plunge more than 10 percent in the following month and a half. The S&P 500 has fallen 5.9 percent in February.

--With assistance from Kenneth Sexton (Bloomberg Global Data).

To contact the reporter on this story: Kailey Leinz in New York at kleinz1@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeremy Herron at jherron8@bloomberg.net, Colleen McElroy at cmcelroy@bloomberg.net, Dave Liedtka, Andrew Dunn

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