Stocks began the truncated trading week after Memorial Day on a negative note. All three major indices finished Tuesday lower, and concerns about bond yields sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average down again on Wednesday.
The bearish action followed three straight weeks of declines for the S&P 500 as the index shed nearly 5% in the past month.
But history says current losses could precede future gains.
Over the past decade, the S&P 500 has logged three consecutive weeks of losses on 18 other occasions, according to a CNBC analysis of Kensho, a machine learning tool used by Wall Street banks and hedge funds to mine market history for potential trading profits.
A month after these declines, stocks tend to bounce back, Kensho finds.
The top sectors following these episodes: Materials, Tech and Consumer Discretionary, which all gained at least 4% the following month.
