10/24/2014
Seasonality: October through December
October has started out in a most volatile fashion. But it’s “Sell in May and go away,” which also means that November begins the converse...the best six month period for the market historically.
So let’s look at the market the last three months of the year, some of the following courtesy of the 2014 edition of “Stock Trader’s Almanac,” put out by Jeffrey A. Hirsch & Yale Hirsch. Other data is from my own extensive data base as well as Yahoo Finance.
From 1950-April 2013, the average monthly returns for the S&P 500 are as follows.
Oct. 0.7%
Nov. 1.5%
Dec. 1.7%
The average monthly returns for the Nasdaq, 1971-April 2013, are:
Oct. 0.5%
Nov. 1.5%
Dec. 2.0%
As for the period 2000-2013, here are the monthly percentage returns, October through December.
S&P 500
2000… -0.5 ... -8.0 ... 0.4
2001… 1.8 … 7.5 … 0.8
2002… 8.6 … 5.7 … -6.0
2003… 5.5 … 0.7 … 5.1
2004… 1.4 … 3.9 … 3.2
2005… -1.8 … 3.5 … -0.1
2006… 3.2 … 1.6 … 1.3
2007… 1.5 … -4.4 … -0.9
2008… -16.9 … -7.5 … 0.8
2009… -2.0 … 5.7 … 1.8
2010… 3.7 … -0.2 … 6.5
2011... 10.8 ... -0.5 ... 0.9
2012... -2.0 ... 0.3 ... 0.7
2013... 4.5 ... 2.8 ... 2.4
Nasdaq
2000… -8.3 … -22.9 … -4.9
2001… 12.8 … 14.2 … 1.0
2002… 13.5 … 11.2 … -9.7
2003… 8.1 … 1.5 … 2.2
2004… 4.1 … 6.2 … 3.7
2005… -1.5 … 5.3 … -1.2
2006… 4.8 … 2.7 … -0.7
2007… 5.8 … -6.9 … -0.3
2008… -17.7 … -10.8 … 2.7
2009… -3.6 … 4.9 … 5.8
2010… 5.9 … -0.4 … 6.2
2011... 11.1 ... -2.4 ... -0.6
2012... -4.5 ... 1.1 ... 0.3
2013... 3.9 ... 3.6 ... 2.9
Wall Street History returns in two weeks.
Brian Trumbore
