Today The S&P 500 Could Do Something It Hasn't Done In 36 Years

After a shaky open on Friday, it looked like the S&P 500 could make a bit of history this week. Unfortunately, this is not the type of record that investors enjoy breaking.

Going into Friday’s session, the S&P 500 had fallen for eight consecutive days. The index hasn’t had a nine-day losing streak since 1980.

CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla pointed out the possibility of a ninth consecutive down day on Twitter Friday morning.

After dipping as low as 2083.79 on the opening, the S&P has bounced 0.4 percent to 2098 and seems to be on track to bring its losing streak to an end.

Even an eight-day losing streak is a rarity. The last time the S&P 500 closed down eight consecutive days was in 2008 during the peak of the Financial Crisis fears. The current streak has been much more gentle for investors. The market is down only about 3 percent in the past eight days compared to a 23 percent drop during the 2008 losing streak.

Quintanilla pointed out that even the S&P 500’s seven-day losing streak in 2011 dropped the market by 7.9 percent.

The losing streak has been attributed in part to Donald Trump’s recent rise in polling numbers ahead of Tuesday’s election. Oddly enough, the last three eight-day S&P 500 losing streaks all occurred during election years (2016, 2008, 1996).

Even after the current losing streak, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY remains up 2.8 percent in 2016.