Dow, Nasdaq and S&P 500 are rising but most stocks are falling

The Big 3 stock market indexes are all rising Thursday, but data on market breadth indicates that the stock market is actually falling. The number of stocks falling outnumbered advancers by 1,528-to-1,239 on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and by 2,016-to-1,898 on the Nasdaq exchange. Volume in declining stocks represented 45.5% of total volume on the NYSE and 58.5% of total Nasdaq volume. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
+0.36%
rose 152 points, or 0.5%, even gainers and decliners were split evenly at 15; the Nasdaq Composite
COMP,
+0.54%
advanced 0.9%; and the S&P 500
SPX,
+0.31%
tacked on 0.5%, with 267 components trading lower. The Russell 2000 index tracking small capitalization companies declined 0.5%. “Ideally, in a bull market, lots of stocks are participating and breadth is strong,” wrote Scott Wren, senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute in a note to clients. “That has not been the case in the current rally, as the advance in the S&P 500 has been quite narrow and most stocks are lagging.”